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I can't figure out why the number of employees a company has is a benchmark of its success. Employees are just an easy expense that anyone can incur if investor
by kolbe 8y ago
I can't figure out why the number of employees a company has is a benchmark of its success. Employees are just an easy expense that anyone can incur if investors give them the money to do so. It seems like every year or so startups invent a new, largely irrelevant, metric with which to advertise their success.
Whatsapp, with 55 employees at the time of their $19b acquisition, is more of the type of company I'd want to strive to become. Not a company that has "30 fortune 500 clients," and will not say anything about the nature of their relationship with those companies or the cash flows that they create.
- pdimitar 8y agoI know right? These buzzwords really don't say anything, I guess it tells us something about the quality of the thought process of the people with a load of money who buy into them! I'd also strive for minimum employees -- not because I am cheap but because more people means more problems. Even adding 3rd person in a team of 2 upsets the balance quite a lot. Every person comes with their own baggage of emotions, prejudice, way of doing things, and bad habits. Accounting for an increasing amount of those is emotionally so draining that managers have been known to commit suicide many times in the past. As for why supposedly very smart people buy into crap like "30x Fortune 500 clients" and "we have 250 employees!", I can only theorize that most businessmen are followers (and not leaders) and to them such numbers are something to strive for to prove success and that's why they finance people who toot their own horn in such a lame way. That, plus filter bubble. When you start having dinners with people like that you definitely can change and become one of them. From then on, you start using their lingo, dress like them and think like them.