For one product...? I’m sure they have a great deal of internal software and versions for numerous OS and platforms - but we’re not talking about a company with hundreds of consumer facing software products.

To be more clear, I meant "it can't only be development and QA". Meaning, there has to be something else included in that number that is not traditional R&D.

Also, to be clear: the statement is meant from the perspective of, how do they have that many employees (what are they all doing); not "why" do they have that many (which, while seemingly very large, I am not in a position to judge), nor meant to be a slander against outsourcing R&D work to China (though, to be crystalline clear, I inherently trust Zoom less because of this, just like I trust companies who base or outsource R&D to Australia less because of Australia's laws on these matters).

I didn't read it as suggesting it was "shady business". I read it as an insinuation that the company didn't know what it was doing from the top down, so they didn't hire smartly or manage well; they just threw numbers of people at the problem (and got predictably bad results).

With good management, a team of 50 should be able to provide what Zoom provides.

Yeah, moments after replying I realized there is a more charitable read :-)

Of course, with this read comes the age old question of "I can build Google/FB with 20 good men, what are they doing?"

> Of course, with this read comes the age old question of "I can build Google/FB with 20 good men, what are they doing?"

Well, this would explain Google's pattern of constantly churning out new products on the theory that hey, maybe someone somewhere wants it.

If you need 20 people to run your actual operations but you've hired 20,000 people, what are the other 20,000 people supposed to do?

The answer might be that truly good people are not willing to work for FAANG, so they have to make do with 100 so-so instead.