Ask HN: Did anyone ever do more with less

My last years in print publishing were around the time of the crash, and I attended many shareholder meetings where the phrase "We'll do more with less!" was offered as a salve to the minefield of job cuts that would follow. I just heard this again on 'Halt and Catch Fire', and remember it from the Baltimore Sun cuts depicted in 'The Wire'. Did any companies who made savage cuts actually ever succeed in 'doing more with less'? Which ones were they?