Interesting. My more lengthy but less impressive career has shown me something different. Many of the companies I have worked at had management issues which p

Interesting. My more lengthy but less impressive career has shown me something different. Many of the companies I have worked at had management issues which prevented the existing tech staff from performing at optimal levels or even inhibited it. Just one example of this is a startup which grew to a 1500 person company under the same CIO, and that CIO was comfortable with what had gotten them that far. Consequently, we had 65 engineers in silos, often strugging with the same problems and reinventing the same wheels. Those of us who pushed for some platform level focus were politely listened to and then forgotten, presumably because new is scary and what has gotten them this far is "good enough". However, at every monthly company meeting, they would promote the recruitment compensation bonuses because we "desperately" needed more tech staff. No, we didn't need more tech staff. We just needed the freedom to do things smarter. At some other companies I've worked at, tech staff is an unfortunate necessity, a cost whose ability to enable the rest of the company and business itself was rarely recognized. If a tech employee left, management would intentionally drag its feet on replacing them (because it made budgets easier to maintain). Granted, I haven't lived in the startup VC world where money magically appears within the right circles. There it would seem that proving to a VC that you are scaling up for big gains means you're growing your staff at a phenomenal pace. In those places, yeah I bet there are people who aren't necessary. I still bet there are management who aren't necessary or who are preventing some of those devs from doing useful things...