[echoangle]

I wonder what 20,000 Employees are doing there though. I know saying "I could do that with 10 people, what are they even doing" is a meme here, but I really can't make a good guess what the employees are actually doing. Risk assessment, looking for new investment opportunities, regulatory paperwork, marketing? 20,000 is a lot of people.

[thehappypm]

How many people is ideal to look after $10,000,000,000,000 in assets? Some bloat is definitely necessary at these mind-boggling numbers, and assets-per-employee is still half a billion.

[coldpie]

One way to get a hint at what kind of work employees do is by looking at open job postings: https://www.vanguardjobs.com/job-search-results

[echoangle]

Nice link, thank you!

[lolc]

I imagine they have actual customer service. But maybe I'm naive?

[echoangle]

In what situation would you contact them? Aren’t basically all possible problems you could have something you would contact your broker for?

[stearns]

Right, you are hinting at the angle that other commenters have pointed at, which is that Vanguard runs a fund management business (which is what the article is about) but also runs a brokerage, does 401k/403b/529 administration, has an advisory business, etc. The total employee count refers to employees working across all those business units, and that includes a lot of customer service, regulatory, back office, etc.

[zerocrates]

Vanguard is also a broker.