[wrenky]

I think the growth of Discord partially explains it- They needed a _lot_ more SRE/Scale engineers, which causes growth in HR/Management layers.

They also added a bunch of monetization stuff (discord nitro) and attempted to get more "community" based features like custom emotes/badges/profiles per server/watch party stuff.

The core experience is the same, I think they've done a great job ensuring that doesnt change! They have also done the usual software stuff, improving core outskirts like stability/performance/login methods/slash options. Its the same core product but better.

[ketzo]

I'm sure their userbase grew in a big big way during the pandemic, but honestly, by the beginning of 2020 Discord was already a massive operation. How much more headcount could pure scaling explain?

I think you're more on the money with the miscellaneous other projects. They were even trying to sell games through Discord at one point.