6 ms·

So about ~150 people (Wikipedia says they have 2200+ employees).

Dylan16807 10y ago
Wow. What do all those people do? What's the difference between a 100 employee music streamer and a 2000 employee music streamer?
- freddyc 10y ago
  Pandora acquired Ticketfly and The Next Big Sound a couple of years back so they're not just a music streaming company. I still can't tell you what they all do though!
  - miguelrochefort 10y ago
    They acquired Rdio as well.
- charlesdm 10y ago
  No clue. But the answer to your question is being a public company. Market participants generally expect publicly traded companies (above a certain market cap) to have lots of employees.
  - Altay- 10y ago
    Huh? I never heard that being a thing. If anything, investors tend to reward lowering head count.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  They seem to have a decent number of partnerships going on. My Mazda dashboard has Pandora integration built in.
- kaspm 10y ago
  I would like to know this too! Say my team has 40 people on it. Every month at least, someone asks what do "40 people do?" and I take them through it 2-4 people at a time across several lines of business maintaining and improving lots of software. Would be amazing to see some people break down their teams publicly!
  - duncanawoods 10y ago
    Agreed - it would be a great bit of content-marketing for a recruitment agency. Lever, TripleByte, Muse... one of you sort it out please!
- rconti 10y ago
  All kinds of integration, sales, licensing deals across a bazillion markets, etc.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- mahyarm 10y ago
  It didn't look like a 2000 person company when I went to their office. They do a lot of random platform integrations / clients & testing themselves, which probably increases the engineering team size a bit.
- mcbits 10y ago
  I haven't looked at Pandora in a few years, but IIRC they were a lot like Groupon in that they had a huge sales force catering to local businesses - the type that would traditionally advertise on local radio stations.
- AjithAntony 10y ago
  Probably like 50% sales, 25% HR/Legal/Admin, 25% engineering/ops
dmode 10y ago
Once you are a public company, you need a robust finance, accounting, and HR infrastructure, along with orgs like investor relations. Plus selling ads is tough. You need a large salesforce to constantly call people and try to sell them, you need account managers to manage relationship with the big advertisers. Now spread these people globally, you are selling different ads in different geographies. In addition, now you need ad operations to track metrics, report on it, and share revenue. This is even before you get into product and engineering.
mosselman 10y ago
Thank you for looking this up. I found the use of a percentage in the title very strange, why not just state the number of employees or "150/2200" employees or "150 employees (7%)". It could have been 7 people in total.
- gtirloni 10y ago
  That was my exact thought. I initially thought this was not newsworthy. I was surprised they had so many employees.

Wow. What do all those people do? What's the difference between a 100 employee music streamer and a 2000 employee music streamer?

freddyc 10y ago
Pandora acquired Ticketfly and The Next Big Sound a couple of years back so they're not just a music streaming company. I still can't tell you what they all do though!
- miguelrochefort 10y ago
  They acquired Rdio as well.
charlesdm 10y ago
No clue. But the answer to your question is being a public company. Market participants generally expect publicly traded companies (above a certain market cap) to have lots of employees.
- Altay- 10y ago
  Huh? I never heard that being a thing. If anything, investors tend to reward lowering head count.
hkmurakami 10y ago
They seem to have a decent number of partnerships going on. My Mazda dashboard has Pandora integration built in.
kaspm 10y ago
I would like to know this too! Say my team has 40 people on it. Every month at least, someone asks what do "40 people do?" and I take them through it 2-4 people at a time across several lines of business maintaining and improving lots of software. Would be amazing to see some people break down their teams publicly!
- duncanawoods 10y ago
  Agreed - it would be a great bit of content-marketing for a recruitment agency. Lever, TripleByte, Muse... one of you sort it out please!
rconti 10y ago
All kinds of integration, sales, licensing deals across a bazillion markets, etc.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mahyarm 10y ago
It didn't look like a 2000 person company when I went to their office. They do a lot of random platform integrations / clients & testing themselves, which probably increases the engineering team size a bit.
mcbits 10y ago
I haven't looked at Pandora in a few years, but IIRC they were a lot like Groupon in that they had a huge sales force catering to local businesses - the type that would traditionally advertise on local radio stations.
AjithAntony 10y ago
Probably like 50% sales, 25% HR/Legal/Admin, 25% engineering/ops

dmode 10y ago

Once you are a public company, you need a robust finance, accounting, and HR infrastructure, along with orgs like investor relations. Plus selling ads is tough. You need a large salesforce to constantly call people and try to sell them, you need account managers to manage relationship with the big advertisers. Now spread these people globally, you are selling different ads in different geographies. In addition, now you need ad operations to track metrics, report on it, and share revenue. This is even before you get into product and engineering.

mosselman 10y ago

Thank you for looking this up. I found the use of a percentage in the title very strange, why not just state the number of employees or "150/2200" employees or "150 employees (7%)". It could have been 7 people in total.

gtirloni 10y ago
That was my exact thought. I initially thought this was not newsworthy. I was surprised they had so many employees.