Sizing What It Costs Facebook to Keep Its Photo Product Running

Estimate the budget Meta needs to keep Facebook's photo product running. Decide what that budget includes, lay out how you structure the estimate, call out each assumption, and end with a figure, a range and how confident you are in it. ```hint Break down the bill Once you have agreed what the budget covers, split it into the costs it is made of, and for each one name the quantity that drives it before putting a number on anything. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does the budget cover only storing the photos already uploaded, or also delivering them to viewers, processing new uploads and paying the team that runs the product? - Should the figure be yearly or monthly, and should hardware count as an upfront purchase or as a running cost spread over its useful life? - Should costs be priced at what Meta pays in its own data centers or at what a public cloud provider would charge? - Are photos sent in Messenger, and video, in scope, or only photos posted on Facebook? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A scope for the budget and a time unit, agreed before any arithmetic - A stated method for sizing each cost the agreed scope includes, with every quantity it relies on estimated explicitly - Every input labeled as an assumption, each with a short rationale - Arithmetic that is correct and unit-consistent from start to finish - A sanity check from a second angle, a final range, and the inputs that move the answer most ### Follow-up Questions - If leadership asked you to cut this budget substantially, which levers would you pull, and what would users notice? - Which assumption moves your answer the most, and what internal data would pin it down? - How would the estimate change as phone cameras keep producing larger files while most old photos are rarely viewed?