<story><title>Why big tech companies need so many people</title><url>https://thebuilderjr.substack.com/p/why-big-tech-companies-need-so-many</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>Every company I&amp;#x27;ve worked for has had some core group of people who cared about doing good work and doing the right thing.&lt;p&gt;No company can maintain that dynamic at scale, though. As you grow, you accumulate people who are good at presenting an image of doing the good work, but they&amp;#x27;re actually operating adversarially in a way that collects the most rewards with the least effort.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not just managers. A lot of ICs treat the workplace like a min-max game, where they are trying to maximize their compensation and minimize the work they do. Every time I mention this, there are comments about how that&amp;#x27;s actually a &lt;i&gt;good thing&lt;/i&gt; because companies have the same strategy, but the people who do this usually screw their teammates more than the company. Big companies don&amp;#x27;t suffer if random people are slacking off and refusing to do their work, but their teammates who want to get a promotion or build their skillsets are going to suffer the consequences of deadbeat coworkers.&lt;p&gt;Small companies aren&amp;#x27;t immune from these problems, but it&amp;#x27;s so much easier to identify and remove the dead weight in a small company. When you have 20 people in a company, it&amp;#x27;s clearly obvious when someone isn&amp;#x27;t pulling their weight. But when you have 100,000 people in a company, a large number of people are going to find ways to settle into obscure roles where their output is hard to measure and they&amp;#x27;ll coast as much as they can.</text></item><item><author>ethanbond</author><text>Ugh, it’s so much simpler than that.&lt;p&gt;Everyone’s number one objective in any company is to make &lt;i&gt;their&lt;/i&gt; individual life easier. Full stop. The most obvious way to do that, if you have the ability&amp;#x2F;budget, is to hire people to do your work for you.&lt;p&gt;Then you can brag about managing higher headcount, you do less work, and you flounder around as a very bad manager with no accountability so long as you keep your workload below the level of &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; manager (who, remember, hired you just to remove work from their own plate).&lt;p&gt;Now remember that everyone you hired has the exact same incentive.&lt;p&gt;It keeps going til the money runs out or until the company buckles under its own organizational complexity.</text></item><item><author>rippercushions</author><text>This post seems kind of naive?  A big part of why big tech companies need so many people is because &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; big company, especially one sitting on piles of money, becomes a target for all sorts of predators and has to defend itself.  So it has to have armies of SOX compliance officers (because it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than getting sued by the SEC), travel expense auditors (because it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than shareholder suits after a VP whoops it up in Vegas and sends the bill to the company), mandatory diversity training educators (because it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than getting sued by various minorities), patent litigation departments (because it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than losing to patent trolls) etc etc, all of which feel like &amp;quot;bullshit jobs&amp;quot; to the average 3-man startup because the average 3-man startup doesn&amp;#x27;t face any of these problems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fredrikholm</author><text>&amp;gt; Every company I&amp;#x27;ve worked for has had some core group of people who cared about doing good work and doing the right thing... but they&amp;#x27;re actually operating adversarially in a way that collects the most rewards with the least effort.&lt;p&gt;Pournelle&amp;#x27;s Iron Law of Bureaucracy! The people who game the system eventually move to further enforce the system (for their own benefit), at the expense of the purpose the for which the system was first put in place.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle&amp;#x27;s_laws&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle&amp;#x27;s_la...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Why big tech companies need so many people</title><url>https://thebuilderjr.substack.com/p/why-big-tech-companies-need-so-many</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>Every company I&amp;#x27;ve worked for has had some core group of people who cared about doing good work and doing the right thing.&lt;p&gt;No company can maintain that dynamic at scale, though. As you grow, you accumulate people who are good at presenting an image of doing the good work, but they&amp;#x27;re actually operating adversarially in a way that collects the most rewards with the least effort.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not just managers. A lot of ICs treat the workplace like a min-max game, where they are trying to maximize their compensation and minimize the work they do. Every time I mention this, there are comments about how that&amp;#x27;s actually a &lt;i&gt;good thing&lt;/i&gt; because companies have the same strategy, but the people who do this usually screw their teammates more than the company. Big companies don&amp;#x27;t suffer if random people are slacking off and refusing to do their work, but their teammates who want to get a promotion or build their skillsets are going to suffer the consequences of deadbeat coworkers.&lt;p&gt;Small companies aren&amp;#x27;t immune from these problems, but it&amp;#x27;s so much easier to identify and remove the dead weight in a small company. When you have 20 people in a company, it&amp;#x27;s clearly obvious when someone isn&amp;#x27;t pulling their weight. But when you have 100,000 people in a company, a large number of people are going to find ways to settle into obscure roles where their output is hard to measure and they&amp;#x27;ll coast as much as they can.</text></item><item><author>ethanbond</author><text>Ugh, it’s so much simpler than that.&lt;p&gt;Everyone’s number one objective in any company is to make &lt;i&gt;their&lt;/i&gt; individual life easier. Full stop. The most obvious way to do that, if you have the ability&amp;#x2F;budget, is to hire people to do your work for you.&lt;p&gt;Then you can brag about managing higher headcount, you do less work, and you flounder around as a very bad manager with no accountability so long as you keep your workload below the level of &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; manager (who, remember, hired you just to remove work from their own plate).&lt;p&gt;Now remember that everyone you hired has the exact same incentive.&lt;p&gt;It keeps going til the money runs out or until the company buckles under its own organizational complexity.</text></item><item><author>rippercushions</author><text>This post seems kind of naive?  A big part of why big tech companies need so many people is because &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; big company, especially one sitting on piles of money, becomes a target for all sorts of predators and has to defend itself.  So it has to have armies of SOX compliance officers (because it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than getting sued by the SEC), travel expense auditors (because it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than shareholder suits after a VP whoops it up in Vegas and sends the bill to the company), mandatory diversity training educators (because it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than getting sued by various minorities), patent litigation departments (because it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than losing to patent trolls) etc etc, all of which feel like &amp;quot;bullshit jobs&amp;quot; to the average 3-man startup because the average 3-man startup doesn&amp;#x27;t face any of these problems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>8note</author><text>Doing the right things tends to also not align with promotions either. The thing that helps your team mates us ignoring the business needs and min&amp;#x2F;maxing the promotion game.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s less fun than doing the right things, and more work than min&amp;#x2F;maxing your quality of life</text></comment>