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This question comes up on every post about a big tech company. LinkedIn in a global company operating commercially in probably almost every country. The "soci

This question comes up on every post about a big tech company. LinkedIn in a global company operating commercially in probably almost every country. The "social network for work" part is easy but when you start talking about things like job listings across the world and then the sales and account management and local office management and compliance and the internal tools and billing and everything else, it's quite easy to get to 10k. I wouldn't be surprised if they have 1000 people in the US just dedicated to sales & account management for the job listings.

12xo 6y ago
I am not surprise, just amazed that a site which is mostly self service and runs on UGC needs anywhere near this many people to operate. But then again, most of the people are probably hold-overs from acquisitions. As an ex VP of Ad Sales, I dont see how they'd need this many people in sales. Its almost all automated self-serve and partner driven. Even with a large US based team to manage the big spends, you're still not needing a large staff... But then again, these types of orgs tend to be filled with a lot of mediocre talent and suffer from BigDumbCompany syndrome...
- brandnewlow 6y ago
  I think we’ve seen that UGC is and always has been a bit of a myth. Social media companies have always quietly employed armies of people to moderate user posts, persuade famous people and Companies to post, to actually do the posting and “media strategy” for those VIPs and companies, and then of course to sell the ads and pro services that come with it all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
three_seagrass 6y ago
It's the perennial HN question that ignores how much global companies need in-market sales, marketing, and support teams to grow.
- badestrand 6y ago
  I think many people here (me included) just don't know what LinkedIn is doing. Apart from "having a website", that is.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bitbuilder 6y ago
>This question comes up on every post about a big tech company. And in turn, there are always replies that justify these head counts in ways that I still have a hard time buying into. All I have to go off is on my own experience, but I worked at a large retailer/wholesaler that had: - 1500 retail store locations. - Probably a half dozen warehouses. - A couple high volume ecommerce sites (not at LinkedIn scale, but scale was a concern). To support those operations, they employed people for: - Staffing the retail stores and warehouses. - Call centers for customer support. - Sales for the wholesale division. - Advertising/marketing for the retail division, all run internally. - Logistics/shipping. - Real estate. - Merchandising. - Inventory management. - Product design. - Sourcing product manufacture. - All of the boilerplate corporate crap (HR, recruiting, accounting, etc.) Almost all of the above had software to support it that was written and maintained in-house, including a custom built ecommerce stack. All of the above took roughly the same headcount LinkedIn now has. The technology team writing and running all that custom software was maybe 200-300 people. So even after I hear all the reasons LinkedIn has to be so huge (sales, support, scale, etc), I'm still left scratching my head.
- grecy 6y ago
  Across how many countries & continents was that company operating? How many currencies, and differing legal requirements did they have to deal with?
- mistersquid 6y ago
  > All of the above took roughly the same headcount LinkedIn now has. The technology team writing and running all that custom software was maybe 200-300 people. > So even after I hear all the reasons LinkedIn has to be so huge (sales, support, scale, etc), I'm still left scratching my head. The reason for your head-scratching is unclear. Your previous company had about the same headcount as LinkedIn. LinkedIn, being an international company even before Microsoft’s acquisition, probably has a similar level of necessary personnel, including internal and external software development teams. I don’t see the reason for your confusion from what you’ve written. Perhaps explicitly stating a point of difference between your previous company and LinkedIn would clarify?

12xo 6y ago

I am not surprise, just amazed that a site which is mostly self service and runs on UGC needs anywhere near this many people to operate. But then again, most of the people are probably hold-overs from acquisitions. As an ex VP of Ad Sales, I dont see how they'd need this many people in sales. Its almost all automated self-serve and partner driven. Even with a large US based team to manage the big spends, you're still not needing a large staff... But then again, these types of orgs tend to be filled with a lot of mediocre talent and suffer from BigDumbCompany syndrome...

brandnewlow 6y ago
I think we’ve seen that UGC is and always has been a bit of a myth. Social media companies have always quietly employed armies of people to moderate user posts, persuade famous people and Companies to post, to actually do the posting and “media strategy” for those VIPs and companies, and then of course to sell the ads and pro services that come with it all.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

three_seagrass 6y ago

It's the perennial HN question that ignores how much global companies need in-market sales, marketing, and support teams to grow.

badestrand 6y ago
I think many people here (me included) just don't know what LinkedIn is doing. Apart from "having a website", that is.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bitbuilder 6y ago

>This question comes up on every post about a big tech company. And in turn, there are always replies that justify these head counts in ways that I still have a hard time buying into. All I have to go off is on my own experience, but I worked at a large retailer/wholesaler that had: - 1500 retail store locations. - Probably a half dozen warehouses. - A couple high volume ecommerce sites (not at LinkedIn scale, but scale was a concern). To support those operations, they employed people for: - Staffing the retail stores and warehouses. - Call centers for customer support. - Sales for the wholesale division. - Advertising/marketing for the retail division, all run internally. - Logistics/shipping. - Real estate. - Merchandising. - Inventory management. - Product design. - Sourcing product manufacture. - All of the boilerplate corporate crap (HR, recruiting, accounting, etc.) Almost all of the above had software to support it that was written and maintained in-house, including a custom built ecommerce stack. All of the above took roughly the same headcount LinkedIn now has. The technology team writing and running all that custom software was maybe 200-300 people. So even after I hear all the reasons LinkedIn has to be so huge (sales, support, scale, etc), I'm still left scratching my head.

grecy 6y ago
Across how many countries & continents was that company operating? How many currencies, and differing legal requirements did they have to deal with?
mistersquid 6y ago
> All of the above took roughly the same headcount LinkedIn now has. The technology team writing and running all that custom software was maybe 200-300 people. > So even after I hear all the reasons LinkedIn has to be so huge (sales, support, scale, etc), I'm still left scratching my head. The reason for your head-scratching is unclear. Your previous company had about the same headcount as LinkedIn. LinkedIn, being an international company even before Microsoft’s acquisition, probably has a similar level of necessary personnel, including internal and external software development teams. I don’t see the reason for your confusion from what you’ve written. Perhaps explicitly stating a point of difference between your previous company and LinkedIn would clarify?