> Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need?
This question always gets posted to HN, and is always the top comment whenever an article talks about how many people Company XYZ has. It seems like a lot of people just have never worked for a company that's growing (in terms of both profit and the amount of _stuff_ they are trying to do). Companies' need for people grows quadratically in proportion to the amount they are trying to do, not linearly. If it takes a staff of 20 to deal with 2 "units of work", it's going to take many more than 40 to deal with 4 units, more like 80. For 10 units of work, we're talking a staff of 500. You need all of these people to manage all of the growing internal network of complexity and yes bureaucracy that forms whenever you need to get people to work together. For every N people you hire, you'll need a manager to manage them, and for every N of those managers, you'll need a second level manager, and so on. You also start needing to actually deal with legal and regulatory compliance (rather than the yolo approach most startups take), you need to deal with HR and payroll for all these new people, you need to deal with power-of-2-scaling training and internal documentation needs. And all of those people you hire to do these things need their own managers and on and on and on.
I've never seen a company successfully scale what they are trying to do without needing a ton of people. Maybe every company I've ever worked at is just inefficient but I don't believe it.
> This question always gets posted to HN, and is always the top comment whenever an article talks about how many people Company XYZ has.
Perhaps because there hasn't been a good answer yet.
> For every N people you hire, you'll need a manager to manage them, and for every N of those managers, you'll need a second level manager, and so on.
But clearly that's not absolutely necessary, because already we know that two uncoordinated companies can make 4 units with 20 staff each. If the second level manager isn't providing enough value in terms of eliminating duplicated work then they shouldn't be hired.
Of course diminishing returns are going to set in, and bureaucratic inefficiency is a law of nature, but I see your answer as more shallow a dismissal than the question deserves.
And not to mention acquisitions come with their engineers, sales staff, support and management crew.
The leadership should have been rebalancing yearly and quarterly in small chunks so they’re not in a position like this. It’s also a strategic play, while they come out with their major AI move next. That’s my guess. Gotta satisfy that board somehow
This question always gets posted to HN, and is always the top comment whenever an article talks about how many people Company XYZ has. It seems like a lot of people just have never worked for a company that's growing (in terms of both profit and the amount of _stuff_ they are trying to do). Companies' need for people grows quadratically in proportion to the amount they are trying to do, not linearly. If it takes a staff of 20 to deal with 2 "units of work", it's going to take many more than 40 to deal with 4 units, more like 80. For 10 units of work, we're talking a staff of 500. You need all of these people to manage all of the growing internal network of complexity and yes bureaucracy that forms whenever you need to get people to work together. For every N people you hire, you'll need a manager to manage them, and for every N of those managers, you'll need a second level manager, and so on. You also start needing to actually deal with legal and regulatory compliance (rather than the yolo approach most startups take), you need to deal with HR and payroll for all these new people, you need to deal with power-of-2-scaling training and internal documentation needs. And all of those people you hire to do these things need their own managers and on and on and on.
I've never seen a company successfully scale what they are trying to do without needing a ton of people. Maybe every company I've ever worked at is just inefficient but I don't believe it.