DocuSign to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 700 employees

Im seeing a pattern of tech companies going public the shitting the bed every time. Digitalocean, Rackspace, the list goes on.

Folks, stop doing this. This is squarely the fault of the VC-Startup overleveraged model where the public listing or SalesForce acquisition is the end goal but its about the most disingenuous and disrespectful thing you can do to the user these days because it's so tried and true what happens next.

Haha, sorry, where are my manners.. ahem.. Blood for the blood god!

Same here. Of all the software companies, Docusign has the easiest, most straightforward product that is neither resource intensive nor it requires some bleeding edge innovation. So what do all those people do really?..

> how can they possibly need over 7000 people?

I will paste my comment from the last time this was asked 4 months ago, an HN thread "Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees at Docusign?" with 159 points [1]:

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33012137

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It's quite easy to figure out if you look at their annual report, for example. [1] Literally the first two pages of content explain, emphasis mine:

> To address this opportunity, our sales and marketing strategy focuses on businesses at all scales, from global enterprise to local very small businesses (“VSBs”). We rely on our direct sales force and partnerships to sell to enterprises and commercial businesses, and our web-based self-service channel to sell to VSBs, which is the most cost-effective way to reach our smallest customers.

> Hundreds of integrations with other mainstream systems where work gets done, such as applications offered by Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, and Workday.

> Globally adopted. Our expertise in electronic signature and other agreement technologies is truly global. This is key, given that different regions have different laws, standards and cultural norms. We assist multiple parties in different jurisdictions to complete agreements and other documents in a legally valid manner

> Vertical offerings. We offer enhanced solutions tailored to particular industries, such as financial services, real estate, life sciences, and government. In some cases, these may be variants of a product like DocuSign eSignature —for example, our additional DocuSign eSignature options for assisting with compliance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations. In other cases, it may be a distinct product for an industry, such as Rooms for Real Estate, which includes task management, templates, and workflow for real estate transactions.

You can see from their expenses that they spend two and a half times as much on sales and marketing than they do on research and development.

It's very easy to imagine how you could need 2,000 engineers to build and support e.g. 500 different integrations and 50 industry-specific solutions, all of which need to be actively maintained for compatibility. And then an even larger salesforce that is selling to companies literally across the globe. Not to mention the lawyers and legal analysts attached to all of those.

Docusign isn't a mere PDF viewer computer program, it's a business that provides ironclad legal services that are vetted by lawyers and guaranteed for your industry's specific legal needs in the countries where you operate.

[1] https://s22.q4cdn.com/408980645/files/doc_financials/2022/ar...

We generally get support fast, but it's barely beyond canned response. The real problem is more with their API which is not oriented for multi-app integration (or external), you have an user who would need to use one third party app for some activities and DocuSign for another? both app will technically have access to all their documents. Just a security nightmare unless complicating your organization setup and cost.

I don't quite understand the logic where people being laid off from their positions / responsibilities and the jobs being posted are similar in nature.

For one, are you really saving costs when you're losing some individuals with deep knowledge of the job for which you would need to re-train a new individual to come up to the same speed and productivity as with the previous person doing the job?

Doesn't this also make productive / talented / hardworking people shy away from your job posting when they know that your company recently laid off employees?