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Want to see some hiring & retention benchmarks from some high growth SaaS companies of this decade?
Summary:
- Basecamp hasn't hired anyone in past 2 years
- Sentry has a median employee tenure of 7 years
- Ahrefs has no sales team
- Zoom hired almost 2000 people in 2020
Summary:
- Basecamp hasn't hired anyone in past 2 years
- Sentry has a median employee tenure of 7 years
- Ahrefs has no sales team
- Zoom hired almost 2000 people in 2020
2/ I did some digging on @Linkedin's Premium and some interesting insights have come up. I made a list of 56 SaaS companies I really adore, to get an idea of how they look at hiring.
3/ I looked at the 3 parameters that Linkedin had to offer:
1. % employees by function
2. No. of hires per month
3. Median tenure of employees
1. % employees by function
2. No. of hires per month
3. Median tenure of employees
4/ Part 1: % employees by function.
Not surprisingly, Engineering was the dominant function in almost all companies, followed by Sales, IT, Support & Marketing.
Here are the average % of employees across different functions:
Not surprisingly, Engineering was the dominant function in almost all companies, followed by Sales, IT, Support & Marketing.
Here are the average % of employees across different functions:
5/ Amplitude, Cloudflare (
), Drift, Heap, Hubspot and Zoom have Sales as their largest function (even larger than their Engg).
This reflects that they're highly sales driven orgs.
Here's the employee distribution for Zoom:
), Drift, Heap, Hubspot and Zoom have Sales as their largest function (even larger than their Engg). This reflects that they're highly sales driven orgs.
Here's the employee distribution for Zoom:
6/ @ahrefs has the largest Marketing team (as % of the entire company). I heard @timsoulo in an episode of @SaaSGrowthHub where he spoke about their intense focus on content. They have no sales team, no free plan and don't plan on growing beyond a team of 50!
7/ @github has 46% team size in the Engineering function, the highest among all. Add to this another 10% in IT. No surprises here!
8/ @Superhuman has HR as the largest function. I think this might be because of the high number of Customer Onboarding Specialists (I might be totally wrong).
Superhuman have adopted a complete 1-1 onboarding for ALL their customers, and this has worked really well for them.
Superhuman have adopted a complete 1-1 onboarding for ALL their customers, and this has worked really well for them.
9/ Owing to their large number of writers, @SubstackInc has 61% people in Media & Comms.
10/ Top 5 companies for Engg, Sales, Marketing and Support (as % of their total size):
11/ Coming to the 2nd Part: No. of hires per month.
12/ If you're aware of @basecamp culture and read 'Rework' by @jasonfried and @dhh, you'll know that they have an amazing, low stress, work-life balance environment. They haven't felt the need to hire anyone in the last 2 years! 
...or maybe they're just not on linkedin? 
...or maybe they're just not on linkedin?
13/ No one likes to be 13. Let's move on! 
14/ @discord doubled their MAUs, going from 56 million in 2019 to over 100 million in 2020. This might explain the surge in monthly hires last year.
(The red dots mean at least 1 senior management hire was made during that month. )
(The red dots mean at least 1 senior management hire was made during that month. )
15/ There's another company that has been 'Zooming' to new heights in 2020 
. @zoom_us had a massive hiring streak throughout the year, hiring almost 2000 people!
. @zoom_us had a massive hiring streak throughout the year, hiring almost 2000 people!
16/ @MiroHQ proved to be immensely valuable as teams around the world went remote last year. They too saw continuous growth in their team size during 2020, fuelled by their recent $50M Series B. 
17/ Part 3: Median tenure of employees
@getsentry has a whopping 7 year mean tenure!
, @SendGrid, @basecamp, @buffer and @Moz each have over 4 years. They must certainly have an incredible work culture to foster such retention.
@getsentry has a whopping 7 year mean tenure!
, @SendGrid, @basecamp, @buffer and @Moz each have over 4 years. They must certainly have an incredible work culture to foster such retention.
18/ Caveat - this data might not be 100% accurate. Many team members of these companies might not have a Linkedin profile, or maybe haven't updated their company or role.
Also I don't know how Linkedin classifies roles e.g. which goes to Engg and which to IT.
Also I don't know how Linkedin classifies roles e.g. which goes to Engg and which to IT.
19/ All that said, I think it's a good proxy to understand certain aspects of hiring preferences, company culture and growth.
Would love to know how I could build on top of this analysis or make it better!
Would love to know how I could build on top of this analysis or make it better!
20/ Here's the full excel sheet, in case you wish to take a deeper look! 
http://bit.ly/2JNWxpc
http://bit.ly/2JNWxpc
