7 ms·

960 is 6% of the global LinkedIn workforce. I am baffled by how many people work for LinkedIn.

actuator 6y ago
That seems like a lot but a lot of interesting stuff in engineering has come out of LinkedIn, I think a lot of other roles like sales might be there.
- ponker 6y ago
  Almost all enterprise software companies have more people in sales than engineering. Microsoft is one big exception but LinkedIn must have more sales than eng.
  - wastedhours 6y ago
    And they prefer you to be managed by a salesperson over letting you be self-serve as they tie you into a guaranteed spend with them. I spent years trying to untangle us from their managed services, but couldn't as they batched all discounts company wide. I've never worked anywhere where departments shared budgets (even in a 3 person startup, my marketing "budget" was kept separate to other elements, alas the CEO had other issues...), but they basically enforced us to. That meant I had to pay for pretty much all the LinkedIn usage company wide out of my budget (to receive the discounts on different products as they only applied to one invoice - huge savings on purchasing separately from different budget lines, but still large sums of cash), but internal systems meant other departments couldn't contribute their share back to us. And once you're in the door, you're then given about 3 different contacts (your sales contact, a follow up sales contact, and then some kind of "content success" person whose only job I could tell was sharing the occasional case study). God I hate LinkedIn sales.
    - saas_sam 6y ago
      Literally everything your company pays for is out of individual departmental budgets? You can't do internal chargebacks, shared services, or move budget around if needed? I've never worked anywhere w/ the kinda crystal ball required to make rigid dept budgets work year-round, personally.
      - wastedhours 6y ago
        The barriers for shifting cash around were really high, and only allowed at half ends where it had to be returned centrally and then reallocated based on business case. Less than a certain amount and you literally couldn't move it out of a department (spend it or lose it) - you could shift it inside the department easily enough, but we as marketing and them as HR couldn't do it. > the kinda crystal ball required to make rigid dept budgets work year-round Apart from some mild quarterly reforecasting, you mean you've never had the joy of trying to flight out an entire year's marketing spend at the start of the year before? And then have to justify every "variance" ;)
        saas_sam 6y ago
        I haven't had that joy, thankfully. But I do routinely have the joy of working with execs to reallocate spend for my products/services. The era of carefully planning out purchases 12 mos in advance is long past. Unplanned, 6-figure software expenditures are the norm now -- and companies that can make that happen without too much bureaucracy are reaping the rewards.
    - ponker 6y ago
      Sounds like LinkedIn only found a way to exploit your pathologically broken budgeting system.
      - wastedhours 6y ago
        True, though I've spoken to a number of brands who had the same experience as well. Also the same experience of the quality of traffic being terrible for the cost as well.
ponker 6y ago
Most of it is sales.
- durnygbur 6y ago
  selling... what? or LinkedIn has become corporate IG and people receive money for all this "this is how I succeeded" and "I overcame my weaknesses" unsolicited content.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Spam tool for low quality "recruiters" is my experience.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    Selling the premium subscriptions for recruiters I assume. But I agree that the platform is becoming a typical social-media cesspool which is a shame because it could be really great if they toned down the "social media" aspect of it and focused more on recruitment, better job ads (most of it is garbage) and essentially be a corporate rolodex (right now it's a pain to use because all of the noise, and the UI is terrible and slow).
  - rococode 6y ago
    Their enterprise recruiting tool costs $9000/year.
    - durnygbur 6y ago
      Such a poor outcome for this price. Once was involved in recruiting and the recruitment platform had some integration and subscribtion with LI. So many hopeless zero-effort applications from India... and some weird from China (or at least from profiles claiming to be from there).
Nextgrid 6y ago
I'm baffled by that number given how bad the product is. It has a lot of potential, but is completely ruined by the social media aspect and their attempt at making it yet another cesspool like Twitter or Instagram, all the way down to the algorithmic feed, likes and reactions. They should step away from the nonsense and make the tool (because yes it should be seen as a tool and not a lifestyle) easier to use, not harder. Stop getting in my way trying to make me use the algorithmic feed (it forgets your choice after a few hours) or nagging me to add a profile picture (I've said no for 2 years, why are you still trying?) or certain profile details I might not want to share, or "following sources" (whatever that means, I guess it's about following bullshit hashtags so you can have even more crap in your feed). The UI is absolutely terrible and slow for no good reason and makes it painful to use. The worst is that you might think "okay well the free version for the plebs is nasty because it tries to drum up engagement, but the premium version should be better, right?" WRONG! The premium version is just as bad but instead of wasting just your time it wastes your time and your money.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I can see that being the cause.
- godzillabrennus 6y ago
  Which product? LinkedIn has managed to release a new app for basically every function while also bundling all that functionality into their primary app... It’s truly a disaster over there...
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    LinkedIn itself. I have not used any of their other products so can't comment on them, though I wouldn't be surprised if they are just as terrible.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  The feed is really quite awful. All social media is somewhat performative by nature, but LinkedIn's feed takes it to another level. It's not just performing for peers, but also performing for current and potential future employers. Never have so many words been written that mean so little.
sshagent 6y ago
They need that many to keep up with the sheer volume of emails they are sending out each day /s
- justsid 6y ago
  LinkedIn keeps suggesting me my mother who passed away 4 years ago. Every week, without fail, I get an email telling me that I should totally connect with her. It’s highly annoying and no matter what I do to my email preferences, I keep getting the same damn email.
  - sshagent 6y ago
    Agreed. A couple of times a year i go try and purge the stuff they send. I do want to see the job searches that I've asked for, i don't expect to see any job posting I've even glimpse at, or anything vaguely associated with it. In all seriousness someone at Linkedin is getting paid per email sent.
downvoteme1 6y ago
A lot of them are sales people. LinkedIn as a people business needs a lot of sales reps and account managers to be in contact with Recruiters and other people involved with selling . 16K people spanning the whole globe is not bad .
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  It is not just big, it is mega big. WhatsApp had world dominance and their product had to deliver instant messages, including photos, videos and other features over crappy internet connections and they managed to build, manage and sustain an amazing consumer product with a handful of people, so 16k for an online job board is laughable and embarrassing. It's just a website after all.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    You can't really automate enterprise sales. Whatsapp would have needed at least 200 salespeople uf they hadn't been bought by FB.
rainyMammoth 6y ago
I'm baffled as well, especially given how mediocre their website is (and yes I know they have more than just their website). Usually with those type of comments someone replies explaining that we don't get it and that you MUST have 20000 people to support a website like LinkedIn

That seems like a lot but a lot of interesting stuff in engineering has come out of LinkedIn, I think a lot of other roles like sales might be there.

ponker 6y ago
Almost all enterprise software companies have more people in sales than engineering. Microsoft is one big exception but LinkedIn must have more sales than eng.
- wastedhours 6y ago
  And they prefer you to be managed by a salesperson over letting you be self-serve as they tie you into a guaranteed spend with them. I spent years trying to untangle us from their managed services, but couldn't as they batched all discounts company wide. I've never worked anywhere where departments shared budgets (even in a 3 person startup, my marketing "budget" was kept separate to other elements, alas the CEO had other issues...), but they basically enforced us to. That meant I had to pay for pretty much all the LinkedIn usage company wide out of my budget (to receive the discounts on different products as they only applied to one invoice - huge savings on purchasing separately from different budget lines, but still large sums of cash), but internal systems meant other departments couldn't contribute their share back to us. And once you're in the door, you're then given about 3 different contacts (your sales contact, a follow up sales contact, and then some kind of "content success" person whose only job I could tell was sharing the occasional case study). God I hate LinkedIn sales.
  - saas_sam 6y ago
    Literally everything your company pays for is out of individual departmental budgets? You can't do internal chargebacks, shared services, or move budget around if needed? I've never worked anywhere w/ the kinda crystal ball required to make rigid dept budgets work year-round, personally.
    - wastedhours 6y ago
      The barriers for shifting cash around were really high, and only allowed at half ends where it had to be returned centrally and then reallocated based on business case. Less than a certain amount and you literally couldn't move it out of a department (spend it or lose it) - you could shift it inside the department easily enough, but we as marketing and them as HR couldn't do it. > the kinda crystal ball required to make rigid dept budgets work year-round Apart from some mild quarterly reforecasting, you mean you've never had the joy of trying to flight out an entire year's marketing spend at the start of the year before? And then have to justify every "variance" ;)
      - saas_sam 6y ago
        I haven't had that joy, thankfully. But I do routinely have the joy of working with execs to reallocate spend for my products/services. The era of carefully planning out purchases 12 mos in advance is long past. Unplanned, 6-figure software expenditures are the norm now -- and companies that can make that happen without too much bureaucracy are reaping the rewards.
  - ponker 6y ago
    Sounds like LinkedIn only found a way to exploit your pathologically broken budgeting system.
    - wastedhours 6y ago
      True, though I've spoken to a number of brands who had the same experience as well. Also the same experience of the quality of traffic being terrible for the cost as well.

ponker 6y ago

Most of it is sales.

durnygbur 6y ago
selling... what? or LinkedIn has become corporate IG and people receive money for all this "this is how I succeeded" and "I overcame my weaknesses" unsolicited content.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Spam tool for low quality "recruiters" is my experience.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Selling the premium subscriptions for recruiters I assume. But I agree that the platform is becoming a typical social-media cesspool which is a shame because it could be really great if they toned down the "social media" aspect of it and focused more on recruitment, better job ads (most of it is garbage) and essentially be a corporate rolodex (right now it's a pain to use because all of the noise, and the UI is terrible and slow).
- rococode 6y ago
  Their enterprise recruiting tool costs $9000/year.
  - durnygbur 6y ago
    Such a poor outcome for this price. Once was involved in recruiting and the recruitment platform had some integration and subscribtion with LI. So many hopeless zero-effort applications from India... and some weird from China (or at least from profiles claiming to be from there).

Nextgrid 6y ago

I'm baffled by that number given how bad the product is. It has a lot of potential, but is completely ruined by the social media aspect and their attempt at making it yet another cesspool like Twitter or Instagram, all the way down to the algorithmic feed, likes and reactions. They should step away from the nonsense and make the tool (because yes it should be seen as a tool and not a lifestyle) easier to use, not harder. Stop getting in my way trying to make me use the algorithmic feed (it forgets your choice after a few hours) or nagging me to add a profile picture (I've said no for 2 years, why are you still trying?) or certain profile details I might not want to share, or "following sources" (whatever that means, I guess it's about following bullshit hashtags so you can have even more crap in your feed). The UI is absolutely terrible and slow for no good reason and makes it painful to use. The worst is that you might think "okay well the free version for the plebs is nasty because it tries to drum up engagement, but the premium version should be better, right?" WRONG! The premium version is just as bad but instead of wasting just your time it wastes your time and your money.

MattGaiser 6y ago
I can see that being the cause.
godzillabrennus 6y ago
Which product? LinkedIn has managed to release a new app for basically every function while also bundling all that functionality into their primary app... It’s truly a disaster over there...
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  LinkedIn itself. I have not used any of their other products so can't comment on them, though I wouldn't be surprised if they are just as terrible.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
The feed is really quite awful. All social media is somewhat performative by nature, but LinkedIn's feed takes it to another level. It's not just performing for peers, but also performing for current and potential future employers. Never have so many words been written that mean so little.

sshagent 6y ago

They need that many to keep up with the sheer volume of emails they are sending out each day /s

justsid 6y ago
LinkedIn keeps suggesting me my mother who passed away 4 years ago. Every week, without fail, I get an email telling me that I should totally connect with her. It’s highly annoying and no matter what I do to my email preferences, I keep getting the same damn email.
- sshagent 6y ago
  Agreed. A couple of times a year i go try and purge the stuff they send. I do want to see the job searches that I've asked for, i don't expect to see any job posting I've even glimpse at, or anything vaguely associated with it. In all seriousness someone at Linkedin is getting paid per email sent.

downvoteme1 6y ago

A lot of them are sales people. LinkedIn as a people business needs a lot of sales reps and account managers to be in contact with Recruiters and other people involved with selling . 16K people spanning the whole globe is not bad .

dustinmoris 6y ago
It is not just big, it is mega big. WhatsApp had world dominance and their product had to deliver instant messages, including photos, videos and other features over crappy internet connections and they managed to build, manage and sustain an amazing consumer product with a handful of people, so 16k for an online job board is laughable and embarrassing. It's just a website after all.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  You can't really automate enterprise sales. Whatsapp would have needed at least 200 salespeople uf they hadn't been bought by FB.

rainyMammoth 6y ago

I'm baffled as well, especially given how mediocre their website is (and yes I know they have more than just their website). Usually with those type of comments someone replies explaining that we don't get it and that you MUST have 20000 people to support a website like LinkedIn