Wow. What could all of these people possibly be doing? It can't be development and QA; what's going on over there?
700 engineers for a software company the size of Zoom is actually pretty small.
Not to defend them against the recent security fiasco, but innuendos such as this that links "employees working in China" directly with "shady business" makes me at least uncomfortable.
With good management, a team of 50 should be able to provide what Zoom provides.
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?
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).
Edit: I looked it up... thought it seemed crazy high but it obviously includes all the support staff too. So they might have only 300 engineers total, for example. I guess that's more reasonable. [1]
"As of January 31, 2020, we had 2,532 full-time employees. Of these employees, 1,396 are in the United States and 1,136 are in our international locations."
"We also operate research and development centers in China, employing more than 700 employees as of January 31, 2020."
[1] https://investors.zoom.us/static-files/09a01665-5f33-4007-8e...
If that 700 count is including support staff, then it becomes slightly more believable, but even then, I'd expect Zoom to be at that 700-1500 number in terms of total employees, not just R&D.
There are 20,000 google engineers working in "research and development", what could all of these people possibly be doing?
You get the face and the voice of people talking directly to the camera. You get the people who they constantly talk to so you know their relations. You know the content of what they are saying.