This is the nonsense you get for inexperienced and jr devs. Let's take a look at the pandemic. The government was handing out free money. People were stuck at

This is the nonsense you get for inexperienced and jr devs. Let's take a look at the pandemic. The government was handing out free money. People were stuck at home. Why did big tech hire every bit of talent that applied and let them do nothing for two years? The same reason that they over hire now, and have dumb roles like "button engineers". The same reason why experienced FAANG engineers leave and build bloated systems with more servers (and problems) than users. The strategy is one to abort competition. To soften potential competitors with cushy jobs and stupid pay days. TO indoctrinate them into a way of building and thinking that isnt wholly compatible with startups. What happens when these processes misfire. You get what's app. 30 engineers and 30 servers at the time FB bought them (or some stupidly low number, I'm close). Your average post FAANG engineer would have 2 dozen people running kafka and kuberneties with a multi million dollar cloud spend and have given most of the company away to VC's. Am I suggesting there is a cabal? No, this is the 'natural order' and has been going on since Edison. The distinction is one of nuance. If you have the stomach for risk it is even easier to succeed now than it was in Edisons time (software isnt physical goods and hardware, its application not creation). Edit: peter thiel 100k dropout offer is likely an overt example of this idea put into action.