I think it’s probably basic accounting math. Let’s say you can make $100B with 50 engineers at 99% profit margin. You pay your employees $1B and they are the h

I think it’s probably basic accounting math. Let’s say you can make $100B with 50 engineers at 99% profit margin. You pay your employees $1B and they are the highest paid in the world and all ecstatically happy and the stockholders make $99B and they are pretty happy too. The board decides they’d rather make $300B at 50% margins because that’s $150B to investors. So it’s lower margin, but they’ve already invested and they just want more money. Of course, I know many programmers that have insanely high profit margins with 1-4 employees and will never go public and no one except for an IRS computer will know they exist. I think corporations are usually pretty efficient. It’s just not always clear what they are efficient toward.