From the link, LinkedIn does $15B in revenue, or $681k per employee with 22,000 people. That seems pretty reasonable to me, even though I don't know what all of those 22,000 people do.
This sounds roughly in line with Twitter's (circa 2021) at ~$700k, but a long way from MS/Apple/Google who are all in the $1-2.5m range. Even Amazon is at ~$500k and has many low paid workers, so would likely be much higher if focusing on the tech/product/etc side. It's not terrible, but maybe a little low?
Google is a terrible point of comparison because we have plenty of direct evidence that thousands of people at Google are doing nothing of any consequence to the business
The fact that Google has ~$1.5m revenue per employee suggests that it's a more efficient business than LinkedIn's at $700k.
Generally speaking, it makes sense to keep hiring more workers if you're getting a net benefit from hiring each one. That being said, at a certain scale the organizational challenges may eat into your net marginal profit. (eg unclear ownership and diffusion-of-responsibility, more layers in the org chart making it harder for decision-makers to hear from the people actually doing the work, longer deprecation cycles, etc)
Hiring is hard and slow, so it's definitely possible that the other companies you used as examples were theoretically understaffed. (if you ignore the costs of hiring, anyway)
- Oracle: $310k
- Salesforce: $416k
- Intuit: $830k
- Adobe: $645k
- Workday: $317k
- Meta: $1.5m
Studying these numbers confirms that Google and Meta are indeed extraordinary businesses. Which is not to take anything away from LinkedIn, as they operate in a different market.
More interesting is the hypothetical question: if you were in charge of LinkedIn, how would you prioritize achieving an RPE near the top of the industry against other priorities (perhaps such as increasing market share)?
Even being somewhere in the ballpark of a Google or a Meta is incredible.