[CodeSheikh]

"...The company had just over 3,800 staff at the end of September.." I am surprised why they need such high number of staff when the functionality of the website is limited to content, reviews, search itineraries. Unless they hire field agents and ask them go inquire and write about a new place.

[kevinstubbs]

This along with the comment about them being in the SP500 got me interested. They are doing more than just the site we all immediately thought of when we saw "TripAdvisor". There's also "InstantBooking" [0], widgets, tools, a platform (it seems) for marketing/buying sponsored listings, analytics, "photo tools", and probably more. All of that was just from what they listed on products. Besides this, they are surely doing research, prototyping, and otherwise developing products that haven't/may never see the light of day.

Furthermore, they seem to do a lot of marketing which for them is the obvious stuff like online advertising (probably in-house team), conferences, and I'm guessing also local events. They also do non-obvious stuff such as branding one of little shops inside the Toronto Pearson International Airport [1].

Finally, looking at LinkedIn, here's the breakdown of employees.

1,100 sales 939 engineering 768 operations 652 bizdev and so on. Full screenshot here: https://imgur.com/a/JCoibId

Obviously, there must be some overlap in job functions here, otherwise people are over-reporting that they are employees at the company (LinkedIn claims 5,679 employees). 160 people doing finance doesn't make sense, for instance (well at least imo).

The only conclusion I can make from this data is that they aren't having thousands of people working on just the main website. I'm inclined to guess that they ARE probably bloated, but without knowing anything besides some marketing copy for their other projects, it's hard to say with any confidence.

[0] https://www.tripadvisor.com/InstantBooking [1] https://www.torontopearson.com/en/while-you-are-here/toronto...

[topkai22]

From TripAdvisors "About" page:

The subsidiaries and affiliates of TripAdvisor, Inc. own and operate a portfolio of websites and businesses, including the following travel media brands: www.airfarewatchdog.com, www.bokun.io, www.bookingbuddy.com, www.cruisecritic.com, www.familyvacationcritic.com, www.flipkey.com,www.thefork.com (including www.lafourchette.com, www.eltenedor.com, and www.restorando.com), www.holidaylettings.co.uk, www.holidaywatchdog.com, www.housetrip.com, www.jetsetter.com, www.niumba.com, www.onetime.com, www.oyster.com, www.seatguru.com, www.smartertravel.com, www.tingo.com, www.vacationhomerentals.com and www.viator.com.

That's a ton of subsidiary companies and explains a lot IMO.

[mythrwy]

TripAdvisor was listed in the SP500 until late last December. Right there besides Caterpillar and Halliburton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies

But otherwise ya. They are a website with content, reviews etc.

[thrower123]

Most tech companies are similarly overstaffed. For whatever reason, people think they can do more with more people, as though things scaled linearly like they did in traditional industries, but it's a different paradigm, and it's at best a logistic curve, if not sigmoid.