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LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

bbc.com

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Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#101

Post by ponker »

wastedhours wrote: post #27
ponker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Sounds like LinkedIn only found a way to exploit your pathologically broken budgeting system.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#102

Post by Dragory »

blizkreeg wrote: post #46
12xo wrote: post #37

What the heck do close to 10k people do at LinkedIn? Serious question. Why does this site/company require 10k people?

you don't think $7B of revenue in 2019 merits 10k people? Do you think you can run that size of a business with 500?

They didn't say anything about whether it merits 10k people, they were curious what all those 10k people are doing. I'm curious about that as well - clearly LinkedIn is doing much more than I was aware of.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#103

Post by wolco »

kevstev wrote: post #55
wolco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue not being talked about is the removal of the recruiter from remote roles. Those recruiters paid linkedin thousands a year for premium access. Plus the lower jobs posting overall.

What do you mean? The only remote job I have had used a typical recruiter from the company side. I am sure he had a premium subscription. I didn't use a recruiter from my side as I knew someone that worked there.

Third party recruiters specifically.

I've seen so many jobs that send leetcode tests instead as the initial filter and use job boards to find candidates.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#104

Post by ogre_codes »

12xo wrote: post #37

What the heck do close to 10k people do at LinkedIn? Serious question. Why does this site/company require 10k people?

Delivering the part of LinkedIn which provides value to end users is relatively trivial. A small number of engineers (20-30) could do that. The problem is ironically how much profit they make.

Look at ad-blocking for example. You as the user won't see how this affects LinkIn, but they likely devote dozens (hundreds?) of employees to fighting ad-blockers and optimizing the site so people don't notice how their anti-ad-blocker solution completely destroys performance. But as a company that kind of investment in staff is profitable because the cost of those engineers is vastly lower than the cost of losing 1% of their advertising revenue.

Likewise, ad fraud, and a dozen other issues which might impact LinkedIn's revenue flows. When you hire your 4000th developer, they aren't providing as much value to the company as engineer #50, but they are providing enough value to cover the cost of employing them (at least net, it's likely 50% of them at that point are dead weight but hard to identify).

Multiply this kind of decision making over 500 other decisions and engineering "Bloat" makes a lot more sense.

And that's before you start adding in things like sales, HR, marketing, etc. Remember, each additional person doesn't need to provide as much value as the first 50, they just need to provide $100-500k worth of value.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#105

Post by ptmcc »

decafninja wrote: post #70
12xo wrote: post #37

What the heck do close to 10k people do at LinkedIn? Serious question. Why does this site/company require 10k people?

I've interviewed for roles at several top tech companies and what surprised me was that there were entire teams dedicated to working on what seemed like a tiny feature or functionality. In some cases, two entire teams - one for frontend, one for backend. Granted, I understand there is a HUGE mind boggling level of scale involved. But still, after going on such interviews, and talking with friends who work at FAANG, e…

A lot of FAANG and FAANG-adjacent dev jobs are not any more glamorous than other dev jobs. A lot of the day to day looks the same, just keeping the lights on. Sometimes a really interesting technical problem does come up, but a lot of the complexity of the job is working within a huge complicated environment, both technically and organizationally.

I will say, completely anecdotally, that the average bar for competency and work ethic is higher. Day to day stuff just gets done faster and more thoroughly with more accountability. But that's just personal experience, YMMV.

I worked on cooler and more diverse stuff at various start ups and contract gigs, but I get paid literally double (or more) in big tech sooooo yeah riding it out for a bit. I don't see doing this for 20 more years, though.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#106

Post by symlinkk »

decafninja wrote: post #70
12xo wrote: post #37

What the heck do close to 10k people do at LinkedIn? Serious question. Why does this site/company require 10k people?

I've interviewed for roles at several top tech companies and what surprised me was that there were entire teams dedicated to working on what seemed like a tiny feature or functionality. In some cases, two entire teams - one for frontend, one for backend. Granted, I understand there is a HUGE mind boggling level of scale involved. But still, after going on such interviews, and talking with friends who work at FAANG, e…

A lot of small features are needlessly complicated at a FAANG because they reinvent the wheel.

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#107

Post by [deleted] »

12xo wrote: post #67
mason55 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

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…

[deleted]

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#108

Post by symlinkk »

curiousllama wrote: post #8

Companies commonly use layoffs as an easy way to get rid of under-performing staff, realize cost savings from previous investments (e.g., automation) ahead of schedule, or efficiently reorganize divisions whose execs fall out of favor. Not going to say this is good, but a However callous it is, roles on the margin get cut when prospects for growth dim.

Yeah doesn’t Amazon lay off 10% of devs every year as part of their stack ranking?

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#109

Post by MattyMc »

varjag wrote: post #72
retzkek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a So, almost literally decimate in the classical sense? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)

My knowledge of corporate culture might be outdated, but I believe the former LinkedIn employees get to live.

I think this varies company-to-company haha ;)

Re: LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

#110

Post by wastedhours »

ponker wrote: post #101
wastedhours wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like LinkedIn only found a way to exploit your pathologically broken budgeting system.

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.
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