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And yet I can't help but wonder what they need that many people for? The core of dropbox is still file syncing with extra tooling to enhance that. Figma had jus

And yet I can't help but wonder what they need that many people for? The core of dropbox is still file syncing with extra tooling to enhance that. Figma had just over 200 people when they sold to Adobe and that is a pretty complex application.

paxys 3y ago
Having an enterprise product automatically increases headcount by 5x. Sales reps, account managers, CSMs, solutions engineers, forward deployed engineers, priority support, compliance...
- gimme_treefiddy 3y ago
  > Having an enterprise product automatically increases headcount by 5x Can you expand on this. Why is this the case. Does it even mean increase in engg headcount, if so why. Can you link to somewhere if possible. Always had this question, and this pattern is very similar in other places. So maybe it works?
  - kiratp 3y ago
    Because you enterprise customers expect it. They pay large multiples above SMB to get dedicated (human) service
  - paxys 3y ago
    It does increase engineering headcount because you are expected to add a lot of features to your offering that end users wouldn't necessarily care about, like DLP, eDiscovery, audit logs, SCIM provisioning, admin controls, compliance with a hundred industry regulations (HIPAA, FINRA, SOX), key management, custom retention policies, data residency. The larger increase comes from the fact that large companies aren't using the checkout form on your website to buy the product, but expect a dedicated team to negotiate the contract and help with product rollouts and customization across their company.
tinyhouse 3y ago
Dropbox's revenue is about $2.5B/year. They want to grow too. You need a lot of people to support that. Sales, marketing, customer success, etc. It's not just the engineers who build and maintain the product. You cannot ignore revenue and growth potential when comparing head counts between companies.
scrollaway 3y ago
The HN rule of headcount: if you have to ask, it’s because it’s Sales.
spamizbad 3y ago
Sales, marketing and support probably make up a majority of their workforce.

paxys 3y ago

Having an enterprise product automatically increases headcount by 5x. Sales reps, account managers, CSMs, solutions engineers, forward deployed engineers, priority support, compliance...

gimme_treefiddy 3y ago
> Having an enterprise product automatically increases headcount by 5x Can you expand on this. Why is this the case. Does it even mean increase in engg headcount, if so why. Can you link to somewhere if possible. Always had this question, and this pattern is very similar in other places. So maybe it works?
- kiratp 3y ago
  Because you enterprise customers expect it. They pay large multiples above SMB to get dedicated (human) service
- paxys 3y ago
  It does increase engineering headcount because you are expected to add a lot of features to your offering that end users wouldn't necessarily care about, like DLP, eDiscovery, audit logs, SCIM provisioning, admin controls, compliance with a hundred industry regulations (HIPAA, FINRA, SOX), key management, custom retention policies, data residency. The larger increase comes from the fact that large companies aren't using the checkout form on your website to buy the product, but expect a dedicated team to negotiate the contract and help with product rollouts and customization across their company.

tinyhouse 3y ago

Dropbox's revenue is about $2.5B/year. They want to grow too. You need a lot of people to support that. Sales, marketing, customer success, etc. It's not just the engineers who build and maintain the product. You cannot ignore revenue and growth potential when comparing head counts between companies.

scrollaway 3y ago

The HN rule of headcount: if you have to ask, it’s because it’s Sales.

spamizbad 3y ago

Sales, marketing and support probably make up a majority of their workforce.