1600 employees and only $80 million in revenue? That's only $50k per employee, which seems very low for a company hiring that aggressively (+25%/quarter).
The article makes it very clear that they are not yet profitable, and won't be for at least a year. Even if they're burning $100M a year, they've raised almost 5 times that amount - so they can sustain losses for a long time.
Exactly! This is a catastrophe in the same way that any public company missing earnings by 1 cent is - Oh my god they only grew by 4x instead of 5x, it's bubblegeddon! Maybe it's a shit show behind the scenes, but from what I've read there's nothing to freak out about
On the other hand, it most certainly isn't a good sign that they have this many employees.
When I read they recently raised $500 million I thought that must be a typo. I thought it must have been $50 million. I was wrong, they actually raised $500 million.
My guess is most of the employees are support & sales which are generally lowering paying positions. Considering all of the complaints on the other recent HN thread, they most likely need a lot of support to hold down the fort.
I wonder why they really need 1600 employees...to be quite honest, and I have a feeling half of them are contractors / consultants.
Commissioned salespeople for sure.
Many, many, many people doing customer support & fixing simple problems.