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Wow, Docusign has 7400 employees on only $622M in gross revenue? For comparison, consider Cisco, a company most people think of as a bloated dinosaur... it has

Wow, Docusign has 7400 employees on only $622M in gross revenue? For comparison, consider Cisco, a company most people think of as a bloated dinosaur... it has ~75000 employees on a gross revenue of $51.557B for FY22. So roughly 10x the employees, but 83x the gross revenue. And this is Cisco, hardly a tech darling at this point. What the hell do 7400 people do at Docusign?

ricardobayes 4y ago
Good question. I've seen less than 300 employees produce self-driving software (on the road today, not PoC level stuff).
lmkg 4y ago
Considering the verticals they're in, they probably need to deal with a whole buncha legal requirements. Different legal requirements from different jurisdictions, many of which are devolved to independent standards bodies. I'm sure that adds some body count.
- jd_illa 4y ago
  Is this true? I don’t think their product offering varies by jurisdiction. At least not in my experience as an attorney.
  - kingofpandora 4y ago
    The fine print that we never read may well vary ... of course you are an attorney, so maybe you do read it!
stusmall 4y ago
I'd imagine the ratio of post sales support staff is higher than normal with them. Either technical or, as someone else mentioned, legal. Docusign only makes sense as a product if it is quick and easy to use. They need to help customers clear any hurdles fast.
- lumost 4y ago
  Anecdotally, I've seen an increasing trend of bloated engineering orgs across startups. Presumably this is motivated in part by a desire to be perceived as an innovative "Tech" company amongst investors. I don't think it's a fair assumption that only sales/marketing orgs are oversized anymore. Oversized engineering orgs also lead to oversized opex spend due to added difficulty in having ~1k engineers contribute to a common code base.
  - monkeydust 4y ago
    Yea I'm seeing this. Lot of 'lets throw more eng fte's' on this problem rather than trying to make existing more productive. This will have to change.
    - subsubzero 4y ago
      100%, what I have seen is alot of companies are trying to emulate Google's laid back culture in shipping products. The problem with this is Google is one of the most successful monopolies ever created. Alot of these tech companies are not, but they emulate the perks and wlb that google has which leads to situations like what we are seeing now.
      - lumost 4y ago
        This comment reminded me of a time long ago when I worked at a middle of the road startup with ~100MM in revenue, ~300 employees, and a margin of ~30-40%. On net the company lost money, and probably had a gross profit of ~200k per employee. A particular principal engineer was prone to arguing that Engineers should be getting paid between half a million and a million per year. On the basis that our contributions were much greater than what we were paid. That Engineer is a CTO now.
        tristor 4y ago
        > That Engineer is a CTO now. Hopefully they took some business classes between then and now.
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lotsofpulp 4y ago
While Cisco is not Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, or Facebook, it consistently puts up numbers worthy of envy by most others: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CSCO/cisco/net-profit-margin https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CSCO/cisco/net-pro...

ricardobayes 4y ago

Good question. I've seen less than 300 employees produce self-driving software (on the road today, not PoC level stuff).

lmkg 4y ago

Considering the verticals they're in, they probably need to deal with a whole buncha legal requirements. Different legal requirements from different jurisdictions, many of which are devolved to independent standards bodies. I'm sure that adds some body count.

jd_illa 4y ago
Is this true? I don’t think their product offering varies by jurisdiction. At least not in my experience as an attorney.
- kingofpandora 4y ago
  The fine print that we never read may well vary ... of course you are an attorney, so maybe you do read it!

stusmall 4y ago

I'd imagine the ratio of post sales support staff is higher than normal with them. Either technical or, as someone else mentioned, legal. Docusign only makes sense as a product if it is quick and easy to use. They need to help customers clear any hurdles fast.

lumost 4y ago
Anecdotally, I've seen an increasing trend of bloated engineering orgs across startups. Presumably this is motivated in part by a desire to be perceived as an innovative "Tech" company amongst investors. I don't think it's a fair assumption that only sales/marketing orgs are oversized anymore. Oversized engineering orgs also lead to oversized opex spend due to added difficulty in having ~1k engineers contribute to a common code base.
- monkeydust 4y ago
  Yea I'm seeing this. Lot of 'lets throw more eng fte's' on this problem rather than trying to make existing more productive. This will have to change.
  - subsubzero 4y ago
    100%, what I have seen is alot of companies are trying to emulate Google's laid back culture in shipping products. The problem with this is Google is one of the most successful monopolies ever created. Alot of these tech companies are not, but they emulate the perks and wlb that google has which leads to situations like what we are seeing now.
    - lumost 4y ago
      This comment reminded me of a time long ago when I worked at a middle of the road startup with ~100MM in revenue, ~300 employees, and a margin of ~30-40%. On net the company lost money, and probably had a gross profit of ~200k per employee. A particular principal engineer was prone to arguing that Engineers should be getting paid between half a million and a million per year. On the basis that our contributions were much greater than what we were paid. That Engineer is a CTO now.
      - tristor 4y ago
        > That Engineer is a CTO now. Hopefully they took some business classes between then and now.

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lotsofpulp 4y ago

While Cisco is not Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, or Facebook, it consistently puts up numbers worthy of envy by most others: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CSCO/cisco/net-profit-margin https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CSCO/cisco/net-pro...