[paulpauper]

That is pretty ironic, I guess. Like firetruck catching fire or ambulance getting in an accident.

2,200 people go. This is roughly 15% of our team.

Why does such a company need 15k employees to begin with? That seems like too many for a site that does not produce anything tangible. Coding, support, marketing, sales, etc. does it really add up to 15K?

[icedchai]

You probably underestimate the marketing, sales, and support aspects. Also, there are no doubt a ton of spam/scam jobs being posted constantly. I'm not saying it adds up to 15K, just more than you or I would think...

[red-iron-pine]

Not saying it wasn't bloated, but international websites -- Indeed definitely is international -- will have to replicate much of their functionality for their new location.

Different rules and roles for data retention, security, privacy, etc. Different languages and interfaces, completely different cultures with regards to sales, marketing, hiring, etc. Regulations -- both official and "official" -- could be very complex. Laws, taxes and accounting may be wildly different. Hiring in France or Germany, for example, is totally different beast than in the US. Very different roles for Unions, employee retention, trial periods, etc. These need to be baked into the website, otherwise you're just Craigslist in a different language -- and CL is already there.

Then there may be deep regional differences in those countries, just as how different states in the US can have all sorts of different, often subtly nuanced, laws. It's not just US law, it's California Law vs. New York Law vs. Delaware -- which means you need an accountant who can do each of those.

And then there is the offshore work, stuff that's contributing to the main efforts. QA teams in Croatia, Support in Mexico or India, etc.

The base code may be the same for those websites, and plenty of shred repos, but it isn't just hiring 2-3 locals, getting something translated, and then slapping some VMs & containers on AWS Europe and calling it a day.

[icedchai]

Thanks for this. The devil is always in the details. "Building a job board" is the easy part...

[desi_ninja]

This is such a very written comment. I always wondered why they needed more people

[arroz]

Nope, it’s too much, doesn’t make sense

[imwithstoopid]

sorry I'm with the parent poster on this one - Indeed was bloated

[icedchai]

I'm not saying it's not bloated, just "less bloated" than folks wholly ignorant of the details would think.

[santoshalper]

Well, obviously the CEO thought so too.

[bsder]

> Why does such a company need 15k employees to begin with?

Because not everything is tech?

For starters, Indeed is in a field with legal compliance issues. If somehow "No minorities." ever made it through their screening system all holy hell would come down on their heads.

That means that probably everything an employer could post needs to be vetted by a human eventually. That's a lot of people given the number of job postings.

[lotsofpulp]

Start a competitor to Indeed and attract their customers with your superior cost structure.

[pastor_bob]

Indeed is no good. They try to suck everything out of you when you apply to a posting on their site, including details about your current company. I avoid using them if I can.

They make money purely out of laziness of their customer base.

"Where should we post this listing? I don't know...Indeed?"

[reaperducer]

I can think of 2,200 people he can hire immediately.

[red-iron-pine]

Depends what they were doing. Anecdotal evidence suggests it wasn't anything important.

2200 HR and DEI drones, legal and financial specialists in parts of LATAM that don't make money, etc.

[bradhe]

This is the best comeback to the mentally...struggling...people that make the half-baked argument that "tech companies are sooooooo bloated"

[rcme]

Yes because Indeed has literally zero moat /s

[throwaway5959]

This is a really tired trope. Clearly they didn’t need as many people. Clearly they need more than most people think they do.

[Thetawaves]

It would be really nice to see the tree diagram that breaks the company structure down to ~100 person 'divisions'

[steve-atx-7600]

A lot of empire building during the good times. Ridiculously heavy layers of prod and eng middle management.