6 ms·

What is really going on under the hood is this: in large companies, the vast majority of employees are unnecessary. They are kept on because having a lot of pe

by lisper 3y ago

What is really going on under the hood is this: in large companies, the vast majority of employees are unnecessary. They are kept on because having a lot of people underneath you in the org chart is a status symbol. The more people report to you, directly or indirectly (the latter being preferable because managing direct reports requires actual work) the more power and influence you have, and so people with a lot of people reporting to them tend to command the resources to allow them to accumulate more people who report to them. Actual productivity is a secondary consideration. Being docile and obedient are the primary qualifying factors because most employees are essentially pets for the powerful few, not much different from maintaining a ranch or an aviary or a stable of race horses.

barbariangrunge 3y ago
Based on querying theory alone, there’s no way the nodes (people) in your organization are going to be fully utilized at all times without introducing other issues like making all the work factory like and repetitive and inflexible, or increasing latency (I forget the term, average time from a job entering the system to when it’s done) to ridiculous degrees
rednerrus 3y ago
The other part of this is ensuring that people have work to work on. This requires planning that most companies don't have.
techvada 3y ago
[dead]
BurningFrog 3y ago
To the extent this is true, the only counterforce I can think of is competition. Companies like this can be outcompeted by others that manage to be less bloated, at least for the moment.
- mach1ne 3y ago
  In theory, but in practice things aren’t that neat; anti-competitive practices and credibility are some items which enable bloat
- tomcar288 3y ago
  that assumes the market is competitive: this is not always the case and is less and less so, every year that goes by. there are so many products out there that used over and over by the same companies for no other reason than it's too painful to switch.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    I didn't claim it was easy or that competition on the average market is perfect. But I do claim it's the only counterforce there is.
nonethewiser 3y ago
That’s what Musk said
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>The more people report to you, directly or indirectly (the latter being preferable because managing direct reports requires actual work) the more power and influence you have Also failure to do so results in you and your team being merge underneath another guy's bigger team, and you becoming redundant because they only need one boss and the guy with the bigger team gets to keep his job. It's kind of like playing Civ but IRL with real people.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
  Civ is actually fun
  - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
    Not as fun as Europa Universalis 4
sriram_sun 3y ago
Well that's a great reason for ycombinator's existence! Acquisitions are a great way for established players to "develop" products.
piva00 3y ago
After working in large corporations I only partially agree with this, if I take "unnecessary" to its literal meaning. It's impossible to keep everyone at a 80-90% busy rate at any large company just due to the inefficiencies a large system accrues, idling is embedded due to the many layers of communication, coordination requirements, etc. I agree there's a lot of empire-building in large orgs, and perverse incentives for management promotion where headcount is directly related to their career ladder. At the same time I completely disagree with the "vast majority" take on it, you can't just hire consultants when needed for ramping up a project, institutional knowledge is extremely important in any large org and I haven't seen any yet that has a streamlined and efficient onboarding process for that. Experience matters and that is a reason to keep an overhead of employees that might look unnecessary in accounting/MBA terms but is a pool of workers with enough knowledge to ramp up a project at a moment's time if the organisation needs. The other side of this would be to keep a ship that's efficient for the current moment but that can't be steered rapidly when needed, that might kill or stagnate an organisation pretty quickly when markets change and the reaction time is too long. As I said, I don't disagree completely, I'm not fond of upper management in general, and quite tired of the whole career game that is played in large orgs but your point of view is very, very cynical.
- bskap 3y ago
  Even beyond ramping up a new project, it can be important for maintaining existing ones. If a service outage costs a company millions of dollars a minute, it can be worth it to keep a team around that can resolve the occasional outage a few minutes faster even if they have almost nothing to do the rest of the year.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  I agree with this. Maybe I've been very fortunate in choice of employers, but every company I've ever worked at, large FAANG to small startup, has had far more work in the queue than staff to do that work. Like MULTIPLES more: 4-10X as many bugs than staff available to fix. 4-10X as many possible features to implement than staff could possible do. So everyone has to prioritize, and the list of bugs and list of potential features always grows faster than it shrinks. People fight for headcount not just to grow their empire, but because there is so much work to do, and they (as managers) are accountable for getting that work done. Of course, not everyone is actually 100% utilized--there's some slack, but as you say, 80-90% utilization seems right. The vast majority of people don't just sit there, twiddling their thumbs for the majority of the time. EDIT: OK, jeez, I'm willing to admit I'm wrong; but this doesn't even remotely square with any reality I've ever seen at about a dozen companies. People just hired to... do nothing? It doesn't make any sense at all. How many of you have an empty bug tracker? How many have zero tasks waiting for you when you clock out at the end of the day?
bojo 3y ago
> They are kept on because having a lot of people underneath you in the org chart is a status symbol. Can confirm. Worked for two Japanese mobile game companies that drove themselves out of business as they strove for headcount over production value.

by lisper 3y ago

barbariangrunge 3y ago

Based on querying theory alone, there’s no way the nodes (people) in your organization are going to be fully utilized at all times without introducing other issues like making all the work factory like and repetitive and inflexible, or increasing latency (I forget the term, average time from a job entering the system to when it’s done) to ridiculous degrees

rednerrus 3y ago

The other part of this is ensuring that people have work to work on. This requires planning that most companies don't have.

techvada 3y ago

[dead]

BurningFrog 3y ago

To the extent this is true, the only counterforce I can think of is competition. Companies like this can be outcompeted by others that manage to be less bloated, at least for the moment.

mach1ne 3y ago
In theory, but in practice things aren’t that neat; anti-competitive practices and credibility are some items which enable bloat
tomcar288 3y ago
that assumes the market is competitive: this is not always the case and is less and less so, every year that goes by. there are so many products out there that used over and over by the same companies for no other reason than it's too painful to switch.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  I didn't claim it was easy or that competition on the average market is perfect. But I do claim it's the only counterforce there is.

nonethewiser 3y ago

That’s what Musk said

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>The more people report to you, directly or indirectly (the latter being preferable because managing direct reports requires actual work) the more power and influence you have Also failure to do so results in you and your team being merge underneath another guy's bigger team, and you becoming redundant because they only need one boss and the guy with the bigger team gets to keep his job. It's kind of like playing Civ but IRL with real people.

0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
Civ is actually fun
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  Not as fun as Europa Universalis 4

sriram_sun 3y ago

Well that's a great reason for ycombinator's existence! Acquisitions are a great way for established players to "develop" products.

piva00 3y ago

After working in large corporations I only partially agree with this, if I take "unnecessary" to its literal meaning. It's impossible to keep everyone at a 80-90% busy rate at any large company just due to the inefficiencies a large system accrues, idling is embedded due to the many layers of communication, coordination requirements, etc. I agree there's a lot of empire-building in large orgs, and perverse incentives for management promotion where headcount is directly related to their career ladder. At the same time I completely disagree with the "vast majority" take on it, you can't just hire consultants when needed for ramping up a project, institutional knowledge is extremely important in any large org and I haven't seen any yet that has a streamlined and efficient onboarding process for that. Experience matters and that is a reason to keep an overhead of employees that might look unnecessary in accounting/MBA terms but is a pool of workers with enough knowledge to ramp up a project at a moment's time if the organisation needs. The other side of this would be to keep a ship that's efficient for the current moment but that can't be steered rapidly when needed, that might kill or stagnate an organisation pretty quickly when markets change and the reaction time is too long. As I said, I don't disagree completely, I'm not fond of upper management in general, and quite tired of the whole career game that is played in large orgs but your point of view is very, very cynical.

bskap 3y ago
Even beyond ramping up a new project, it can be important for maintaining existing ones. If a service outage costs a company millions of dollars a minute, it can be worth it to keep a team around that can resolve the occasional outage a few minutes faster even if they have almost nothing to do the rest of the year.
ryandrake 3y ago
I agree with this. Maybe I've been very fortunate in choice of employers, but every company I've ever worked at, large FAANG to small startup, has had far more work in the queue than staff to do that work. Like MULTIPLES more: 4-10X as many bugs than staff available to fix. 4-10X as many possible features to implement than staff could possible do. So everyone has to prioritize, and the list of bugs and list of potential features always grows faster than it shrinks. People fight for headcount not just to grow their empire, but because there is so much work to do, and they (as managers) are accountable for getting that work done. Of course, not everyone is actually 100% utilized--there's some slack, but as you say, 80-90% utilization seems right. The vast majority of people don't just sit there, twiddling their thumbs for the majority of the time. EDIT: OK, jeez, I'm willing to admit I'm wrong; but this doesn't even remotely square with any reality I've ever seen at about a dozen companies. People just hired to... do nothing? It doesn't make any sense at all. How many of you have an empty bug tracker? How many have zero tasks waiting for you when you clock out at the end of the day?

bojo 3y ago

> They are kept on because having a lot of people underneath you in the org chart is a status symbol. Can confirm. Worked for two Japanese mobile game companies that drove themselves out of business as they strove for headcount over production value.