Three words: zero interest rates. Since around 2008-2009, our customers have not been customers. Our customers have been investors. Money has been so cheap tha

Three words: zero interest rates. Since around 2008-2009, our customers have not been customers. Our customers have been investors. Money has been so cheap that the primary goal of most organizations has been to court investment, not to actually create value. It was easier to raise money than to build product or sell anything. To do this the goal is to make the company look like a potential "unicorn." That means burying whatever is wrong, over-hiring and over-engineering to make the company look serious and big, complexifying everything to give all those over-hired engineers something to do, and trying to gain as many users as possible as fast as possible even if it's completely unsustainable. In that world efficiency literally does not matter. In fact, it can be a liability since it means you're not spending investor cash fast enough and you don't have enough complexity to make your over-hired engineering teams feel like they are being productive. If you're not spending that cash you don't need to raise more. It's the startup fund raising version of the well known "you have to spend your entire budget by the end of the fiscal year or you will get less next year."