The point here is that Twitter really is one of the cases where vertical scaling is not, on the balance of non-functional requirements to engineering overhead, the right decision. They really do need to pay the complexity piper.
I remember asking a question about scaling on SO and getting a response about how my data was small, because it could fit on an SSD (for that one small component)
I miss not having real scaling issues sometimes. They make my head hurt.
You are not Google.
You do not have Google's problems.
You do not have scaling issues.
For you, N is small and will stay small.
Stop giving me this delusional resume-padding garbage to implement. For you, here, it is delusion and lies.