6 ms·

zendesk is 6k employees, they have general council on staff

by gavingmiller 2y ago

genter 2y ago
I think paulpauper is saying the researcher that finds the vulnerability needs a lawyer.
- pphysch 2y ago
  I thought the point of bug bounties was to incentivize whitehat behavior, not scare them off with legal BS. Lol.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Tarpit?
- paulpauper 2y ago
  correct
zer0x4d 2y ago
This is worse than Docusign. What do 6000 people at Zendesk do? It's a simple ticket management software with maybe 10 features
- teaearlgraycold 2y ago
  I look at the Docusign building every day and shake my head. 20 stories of office space!
  - pavlov 2y ago
    Software developers being surprised that software companies need to do a lot more than just write code is kind of like sailors being surprised that global logistics involves a lot more than handling a ship.
    - appendix-rock 2y ago
      Still naive enough to buy into the lie that they can just be “left alone to do the REAL work” and a business just…spontaneously appears around them.
      - ozim 2y ago
        Solopreneurs making millions just like Pieter Levels are giving wrong impression.
- echoangle 2y ago
  I am actually seriously interested in what people there do day to day. I’m wondering this about a lot of very large companies, I would definitely watch a documentary about that.
  - ianmcgowan 2y ago
    Just re-watch Office Space..
  - IggleSniggle 2y ago
    Hour-long meetings about whether the copy should read "data center," "datacenter," "data-center," or whether it is really even correct to say any of these at all. And then negotiating with the design folks to fit in the extra character. Only to throw it all away because nobody thought about the fact that it has to support 5 different languages. I wish I was kidding. Used to work at a place that did crap like that, pulling in developers for these time sucks because "only they really know the correct technical usage for our industry."
    - beryilma 2y ago
      I had a similar meeting with documentation folks about "dataset" vs. "data set". With Google trend charts and all... I also wish I was kidding.
      - Aachen 2y ago
        It's not weird to pick one and keep a consistent style, for example by looking at Google or at Wikipedia or some other source if the dictionary lists both or neither, but to have meetings about it?!
        willcipriano 2y ago
        Feels like something the technical writers and copy writers should decide around the watercooler if anything. Smells like being afraid to make a choice, even a tiny one.
- MangoCoffee 2y ago
  I previously worked for a mortgage software startup that attracted interest from big banks. To ease concerns about our scalability and longevity, we move from a tiny office to an office with a lot of empty space. This strategic move supposes signaled to prospective corporate clients that we were committed to sustaining our solution over the long term, rather than just a few years but in the end the company went out of business. so much for that.
  - ozim 2y ago
    Yet the same corporate will eat anything that Google or MSFT does while we all know they kill projects just like anyone else or like any smaller company going out.
- j0hnyl 2y ago
  If you google "Zendesk annual revenue" you will find that perhaps many of those 6000 employees are doing something after all.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Big companies are places where you get kudos for only taking two weeks to solve a problem you’ve solved elsewhere in two days. To an extent it’s Little’s Law. The latency requires more “CPUs” to handle the traffic.
    - to11mtm 2y ago
      This is super loud to me RN because some of these "big" companies are case studies in Mythical Man Month's "N channels of communication" as well as weird flashbacks to discussions on costs context switching and schedulers in various CS courses.
      - hinkley 2y ago
        It's throughput versus responsiveness. If you can't get one story through in a week, you start a bunch of them so one finishes every few days.
- pphysch 2y ago
  If it's anything like ServiceNow, they have insane feature bloat and poor overall software architecture.
  - wredue 2y ago
    Every single click in ServiceNow takes a full 2 seconds to do anything. For a ticketing system. Insane. What’s more insane is that it is still better than the vast majority of ticketing software. I don’t know what it is about ticketing and Helpdesk that it ALwAYs ends up like that.
    - svdr 2y ago
      We are using Helpscout wich is very nice over all. The also do not send the weirdly formatted ticket email, with 'respond above this line' etc.
    - ptmcc 2y ago
      > I don’t know what it is about ticketing and Helpdesk that it ALwAYs ends up like that. The curse of B2B software is that every new big customer wants some custom feature or configuration that is the "deal breaker" for their multi-million dollar contract signing. And everyone except engineering is eager to give it to them because it's not their problem once the ink is dry. Support and renewals are the next guy's problem.
  - riehwvfbk 2y ago
    What's interesting is that Frank Slootman touts this transformation as a huge success in his book and talks at length about his conflict with Fred Luddy (who originally authored the simple ticketing incarnation of the ServiceNow monsterblob). The focus on keeping things simple is highlighted as an example of nerds' nearsighted thinking.
    - pphysch 2y ago
      I'm sure it's a huge success for the few earning the profits from ServiceNow. Like any SaaS, the more feature boxes you check, the more potential customers you can "satisfy". And the worse the UX gets for the average user (which then gets driven to purchasing more support). Great for business (the few), terrible for users (the many). No contradiction there.
- appendix-rock 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - zer0x4d 2y ago
    Never said that, but a competent engineer should be able to build like 75% of the main functionality of Zendesk over a weekend. Now, I understand there's probably a lot more to it which is why I would expect it to be a company of around 50 engineers and 150 business/marketing/etc and that's being generous. The hill I'd die on is that, with money not being a scarce resource and a technically feasible challenge present, a team of 200 should be able to build and sustain almost anything in the world. And that's being even generous. I think realistically a team of 50 should be able to build almost anything
    - iinnPP 2y ago
      Just pick the 50 people who can weekend something and you'll be set to build any 5 things.
- dewey 2y ago
  Let me guess, you could build it over the weekend?
  - zer0x4d 2y ago
    Never said that, but a competent engineer should be able to build like 75% of the main functionality of Zendesk over a weekend. Now, I understand there's probably a lot more to it which is why I would expect it to be a company of around 50 engineers and 150 business/marketing/etc and that's being generous. The hill I'd die on is that, with money not being a scarce resource and a technically feasible challenge present, a team of 200 should be able to build and sustain almost anything in the world. And that's being even generous. I think realistically a team of 50 should be able to build almost anything
    - dewey 2y ago
      That’s a very HN take but the reality is that the tech is usually never the hard part. Selling, supporting, legal, all the certifications and enterprise contracts you have to do for a product like that are the hard part.
      - TZubiri 2y ago
        Valuable? Yes Tiring? Sure Hard? I guess You have to admit it's a very social job, talking with lots and lots and lots of people
- SL61 2y ago
  A lot of them are probably sales and support.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 2y ago
  Zendesk is not just one product, they have: - chat stuff you can embed into your site for user support - managed call center software - knowledgebase management linking all the other services - whitelabel consumer forums you can use for offloading some of the support - a shitton of analytics - sales CRM - profile platform you can link to various sources of information to get info on their activity on your site, so that you can use that for support And there is probably a few more. Sales CRM alone can be its own company. As usual on hackernews there is a lot more to it, but you are just not exposed to it.

zendesk is 6k employees, they have general council on staff

genter 2y ago

I think paulpauper is saying the researcher that finds the vulnerability needs a lawyer.

pphysch 2y ago
I thought the point of bug bounties was to incentivize whitehat behavior, not scare them off with legal BS. Lol.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Tarpit?
paulpauper 2y ago
correct

zer0x4d 2y ago

This is worse than Docusign. What do 6000 people at Zendesk do? It's a simple ticket management software with maybe 10 features

teaearlgraycold 2y ago
I look at the Docusign building every day and shake my head. 20 stories of office space!
- pavlov 2y ago
  Software developers being surprised that software companies need to do a lot more than just write code is kind of like sailors being surprised that global logistics involves a lot more than handling a ship.
  - appendix-rock 2y ago
    Still naive enough to buy into the lie that they can just be “left alone to do the REAL work” and a business just…spontaneously appears around them.
    - ozim 2y ago
      Solopreneurs making millions just like Pieter Levels are giving wrong impression.
echoangle 2y ago
I am actually seriously interested in what people there do day to day. I’m wondering this about a lot of very large companies, I would definitely watch a documentary about that.
- ianmcgowan 2y ago
  Just re-watch Office Space..
- IggleSniggle 2y ago
  Hour-long meetings about whether the copy should read "data center," "datacenter," "data-center," or whether it is really even correct to say any of these at all. And then negotiating with the design folks to fit in the extra character. Only to throw it all away because nobody thought about the fact that it has to support 5 different languages. I wish I was kidding. Used to work at a place that did crap like that, pulling in developers for these time sucks because "only they really know the correct technical usage for our industry."
  - beryilma 2y ago
    I had a similar meeting with documentation folks about "dataset" vs. "data set". With Google trend charts and all... I also wish I was kidding.
    - Aachen 2y ago
      It's not weird to pick one and keep a consistent style, for example by looking at Google or at Wikipedia or some other source if the dictionary lists both or neither, but to have meetings about it?!
      - willcipriano 2y ago
        Feels like something the technical writers and copy writers should decide around the watercooler if anything. Smells like being afraid to make a choice, even a tiny one.
MangoCoffee 2y ago
I previously worked for a mortgage software startup that attracted interest from big banks. To ease concerns about our scalability and longevity, we move from a tiny office to an office with a lot of empty space. This strategic move supposes signaled to prospective corporate clients that we were committed to sustaining our solution over the long term, rather than just a few years but in the end the company went out of business. so much for that.
- ozim 2y ago
  Yet the same corporate will eat anything that Google or MSFT does while we all know they kill projects just like anyone else or like any smaller company going out.
j0hnyl 2y ago
If you google "Zendesk annual revenue" you will find that perhaps many of those 6000 employees are doing something after all.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Big companies are places where you get kudos for only taking two weeks to solve a problem you’ve solved elsewhere in two days. To an extent it’s Little’s Law. The latency requires more “CPUs” to handle the traffic.
  - to11mtm 2y ago
    This is super loud to me RN because some of these "big" companies are case studies in Mythical Man Month's "N channels of communication" as well as weird flashbacks to discussions on costs context switching and schedulers in various CS courses.
    - hinkley 2y ago
      It's throughput versus responsiveness. If you can't get one story through in a week, you start a bunch of them so one finishes every few days.
pphysch 2y ago
If it's anything like ServiceNow, they have insane feature bloat and poor overall software architecture.
- wredue 2y ago
  Every single click in ServiceNow takes a full 2 seconds to do anything. For a ticketing system. Insane. What’s more insane is that it is still better than the vast majority of ticketing software. I don’t know what it is about ticketing and Helpdesk that it ALwAYs ends up like that.
  - svdr 2y ago
    We are using Helpscout wich is very nice over all. The also do not send the weirdly formatted ticket email, with 'respond above this line' etc.
  - ptmcc 2y ago
    > I don’t know what it is about ticketing and Helpdesk that it ALwAYs ends up like that. The curse of B2B software is that every new big customer wants some custom feature or configuration that is the "deal breaker" for their multi-million dollar contract signing. And everyone except engineering is eager to give it to them because it's not their problem once the ink is dry. Support and renewals are the next guy's problem.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago
  What's interesting is that Frank Slootman touts this transformation as a huge success in his book and talks at length about his conflict with Fred Luddy (who originally authored the simple ticketing incarnation of the ServiceNow monsterblob). The focus on keeping things simple is highlighted as an example of nerds' nearsighted thinking.
  - pphysch 2y ago
    I'm sure it's a huge success for the few earning the profits from ServiceNow. Like any SaaS, the more feature boxes you check, the more potential customers you can "satisfy". And the worse the UX gets for the average user (which then gets driven to purchasing more support). Great for business (the few), terrible for users (the many). No contradiction there.
appendix-rock 2y ago
[flagged]
- zer0x4d 2y ago
  Never said that, but a competent engineer should be able to build like 75% of the main functionality of Zendesk over a weekend. Now, I understand there's probably a lot more to it which is why I would expect it to be a company of around 50 engineers and 150 business/marketing/etc and that's being generous. The hill I'd die on is that, with money not being a scarce resource and a technically feasible challenge present, a team of 200 should be able to build and sustain almost anything in the world. And that's being even generous. I think realistically a team of 50 should be able to build almost anything
  - iinnPP 2y ago
    Just pick the 50 people who can weekend something and you'll be set to build any 5 things.
dewey 2y ago
Let me guess, you could build it over the weekend?
- zer0x4d 2y ago
  Never said that, but a competent engineer should be able to build like 75% of the main functionality of Zendesk over a weekend. Now, I understand there's probably a lot more to it which is why I would expect it to be a company of around 50 engineers and 150 business/marketing/etc and that's being generous. The hill I'd die on is that, with money not being a scarce resource and a technically feasible challenge present, a team of 200 should be able to build and sustain almost anything in the world. And that's being even generous. I think realistically a team of 50 should be able to build almost anything
  - dewey 2y ago
    That’s a very HN take but the reality is that the tech is usually never the hard part. Selling, supporting, legal, all the certifications and enterprise contracts you have to do for a product like that are the hard part.
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      Valuable? Yes Tiring? Sure Hard? I guess You have to admit it's a very social job, talking with lots and lots and lots of people
SL61 2y ago
A lot of them are probably sales and support.
isbvhodnvemrwvn 2y ago
Zendesk is not just one product, they have: - chat stuff you can embed into your site for user support - managed call center software - knowledgebase management linking all the other services - whitelabel consumer forums you can use for offloading some of the support - a shitton of analytics - sales CRM - profile platform you can link to various sources of information to get info on their activity on your site, so that you can use that for support And there is probably a few more. Sales CRM alone can be its own company. As usual on hackernews there is a lot more to it, but you are just not exposed to it.