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TheJawsofIce t1_j6ou4xj wrote

Why in god's name would Paypal need 28,500 employees to begin with? I realize it's a big important company, but that just seems insane to me.

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Ok-Welder-4816 t1_j6p1uog wrote

That includes call centre reps and other low-level jobs

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TheJawsofIce t1_j6pgipx wrote

It might not though - it might only include direct-hire employees, they could have a bunch of contractors who aren't included here.

Edit - what I mean to say is, those low-level employees might be all or mostly contractors who aren't counted among the 2,000 or the total.

Edit 2 - but of course I'll never know, because I'm not reading the article.

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hawkeye224 t1_j6p297a wrote

The thing is, if you now look at any company and try to guesstimate the number of employees, it's going to be at least an order of magnitude higher than what you thought.

I'm pretty sure that companies doing similar stuff in e.g. 2000-2005 were like 1/10th the size, yet managed to get work done (and without the supposed productivity/automation improvements tools that appeared since that time..).

Michael Burry thinks there's something called a "white collar bubble" and I agree with him. There's a book about "bullshit jobs" which also explores this topic.

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