[CydeWeys]

I'm just surprised that you're surprised that a large number of people are involved in the manufacturing and distribution of a physical good. If you think 2,000 employees is a lot, wait until you see how many employees a company like Ford has.

I think your mind is a little bit stuck in the SF bubble.

[dang]

> I think your mind is a little bit stuck in the SF bubble.

I'm sure you meant no harm, but please don't make unfounded personal comments like that. They have a high probability of being taken ill and provoking defensive reactions. And they add no information, except perhaps information about the commenter's assumptions.

[CydeWeys]

I don't think it's that personal. I've had people point out to me before that my thinking was a bit divorced from reality, and it was really helpful to be told that in no uncertain terms. Actually, some of the very best advice or information that anyone has ever given me. Yes, it was tough to be on the end of a blunt message like that in that moment, but over time I've realized that it was definitely worth it.

The reality of the situation is that there are at least thousands of different large-scale manufacturers worldwide across all possible industries that employ thousands of employees on up each. This is basically the history of the industrial/manufacturing revolution that we're talking about here. This should be common knowledge, and if it's not, the most helpful solution is to go learn more about it. NO OTHER industry is like software engineering, where all it can take is a dozen hackers to yield a billion dollar startup. Reacting in surprise that there exists a single manufacturing company of that scale in employee count, when in fact there are thousands, indicates that yes, you might be in a bubble.

[dang]

Indeed, I have too. But it's a far different operation on the internet, and if you're going to attempt it here, you need to provide clear differentiators from garden-variety personal abrasiveness, which is definitely going to be the default interpretation.

From a community point of view, if there's a nontrivial chance of generating an angry subthread, then the expected value of such a comment is negative. You can change that into a positive by putting more care into how you express your point. It's hard, but doable; there are users here who are good at it.

[BinaryIdiot]

> a large number of people are involved in the manufacturing and distribution of a physical good.

Manufacturing per product is typically limited to few locations (likely 1 location for this company as far as I can tell). Yeah it's a lot of work but I'm curious as to what their make-up is as far as employees go. Reading up on a lot of logistics it seems like they could get away with 1,000 so I'm curious as to what those 2,000 do :)

> If you think 2,000 employees is a lot, wait until you see how many employees a company like Ford has

Seems like an apples to organges comparison. Ford does R&D on vehicles which include a vast amount of complex parts but they also do manufacturing all across the world, various offices to manage this and work with partners, dealer inspectors, etc. Ford has multiple products that all are incredibly high in complexity next to yogurt.

[potatolicious]

Yogurt (or any manufactured food product, really) is surprisingly high in complexity...

I'll echo the GP post - I'm a bit surprised at the amount of surprise. Maybe we need to be doing a better job of educating people about these things (or conversely, maybe we need to do a better job of sticking our heads outside our respective bubbles).

Obviously cars and yogurt are not directly comparable, but I'd wager they have similar dimensions of complexity - you have a lot of raw material provided by a lot of different vendors, all of which need to be managed and their output verified aggressively. Ford for example outsources the bulk of the parts for their vehicles, both R&D and manufacturing, and has to manage these same vendor relationships.

You have a lot of logistics when it comes to bringing a lot of different inputs together.

And then you have complex, precise manufacturing processes that not only have to be highly productive but also highly safe. There's a lot of human labor involved when it comes to compliance and safety, not to mention simply operating factories.

And then you have a lot of complexity in logistics to get the product to your customers - arguably Chobani is substantially more complex than any car company here, since there's a wider array and number of retailers than there are dealerships - and the relationship between supermarkets and manufacturer is more distant and harder to control than between dealerships and car brands.

All of this before we get into the administrative side of the company: marketing, sales, etc.

I'm surprised they can do it with as few as 2000 people.

[BinaryIdiot]

> I'll echo the GP post - I'm a bit surprised at the amount of surprise. Maybe we need to be doing a better job of educating people about these things (or conversely, maybe we need to do a better job of sticking our heads outside our respective bubbles).

I get everything you're saying and as I said I am not in the same industry but I've taken cursory looks and 2,000 still seems high to me. But I'm not saying they're doing it wrong and I have to be right, etc; I would just love a breakdown to get an idea for how they manage / use so many employees.

For instance Nabisco has a large factory that has 1,200 employees that handles the making, packaging and shipping out of about 320 million pounds of snack food a year. Granted they're a crazy huge company so not comparable but it shows what 1,200 people can do to some degree in food manufacturing but obviously there are huge differences there. It's hard to find a company of similar market size that I actually know of to compare employee counts.

Do you have any references for employee utilization / counts at various food manufacturers / distributors?

[CydeWeys]

You're comparing employment at a single factory to employment at an entire company, though. There are lots of jobs at Chobani that aren't factory jobs. And Nabisco has a much higher total employment count as well.

I too would love to see a breakdown of exactly how big each department of a given company is. I have no reason to suspect that they employ significantly more people than necessary though; the profit motive gives good reason to avoid doing that.