The West seems to target a "skeleton" staff for nearly everything these days. Management theory piles it as a best practice under "just in time delivery", but t

The West seems to target a "skeleton" staff for nearly everything these days. Management theory piles it as a best practice under "just in time delivery", but the reality is that there no longer is the distinction between fully staffed and skeleton. I spent some time in Belgium a few years ago and was amazed to see that the two people on road projects who turn the "slow/stop" signs to control traffic on single-lanes were replaced with robots. So the EU has managed to figure out how to go under skeleton at least. Meanwhile, when I was in Japan, there were indeed lots of seemingly "useless" people doing "useless" jobs on similar sized projects.