There's a naïveté in saying "I could do that in a weekend" as a measure for employee bloat, but that's making a straw man of the question. It is nearly always

There's a naïveté in saying "I could do that in a weekend" as a measure for employee bloat, but that's making a straw man of the question. It is nearly always more probable that a large company with several hundred or more plus engineers doesn't need that many. That those engineers are there for other reasons -- political reasons or speculating on new products, valuation reasons, etc. -- than for the reason that those engineers are fundamental to the top or bottom line of the company's core product/s. Uber does not need 2000 engineers. That's a prima facie fact. I've worked inside several large companies and saw this first hand. Hundreds of engineers across teams doing "stuff", no doubt, but nothing that ultimately or ever tied to the top or bottom line. The only ideas that I could come up with for why these people were there were: perhaps the headcount helped company valuation, perhaps we needed that many benchwarmers for when there was company churn, maybe there is some political reasons a manager wants a sizeable headcount on their team, or maybe it's just leadership ignorance as to how things are getting delivered. But in no way could I see a concrete justification for many teams and many engineers. What am I missing?