Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, said the company had only about 50 employees, including 30 highly vetted engineers, according to the Financial Times. Its team members are selected through programming competitions to attract winners, and the team of programmers is mainly from Ukraine. According to a person familiar with the matter, Telegram employees are usually super young Eastern Europeans, earning $500,000 a year. Pavel Durov revealed to the Financial Times earlier this year that his employees have almost zero attrition rate because they share the same values and believe in the company's mission. Durov himself is a central figure in decision-making, and despite having nearly 1 billion users, the pace of innovation is closer to that of startups. He personally does not like to think of himself as a co-director, a boss, and prefers to think of himself as a product leader. Without his deep involvement, no new features will be launched.