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Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting

Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting on a one-person unicorn. The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.

squigz 1y ago
I don't deny wealth disparity is very much a thing, but this doesn't seem the point to make it. How many people does Google employ? Amazon? Apple? Probably as much or more than a small town.
- specproc 1y ago
  Fair point, see my response to the commenter above.
- _aavaa_ 1y ago
  How many Kodak workers had to pee in bottles, or needed suicide nets around their company dorms?
  - solardev 1y ago
    Hard to say for sure, but I think we can all agree it was a company full of negatives...
- joegibbs 1y ago
  Amazon has 1.5m, it's more on the level of a small country. Google is only at 180k, just small city level.
  - lr4444lr 1y ago
    You're counting warehouse and delivery workers though in that number, which IIRC is the significant majority. Google doesn't move physical products. (At least, not anything near that scale.)
- fennecbutt 1y ago
  Yeah and how many of those people are on 0 hour contracts with a minimum wage that's barely been adjusted for 30 years.
throw0101a 1y ago
> Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. The 'tech companies' (equivalent) of the past tended to deal with physical goods, and so needed physical means of scaling to become as large as they did. More recent tech companies are often software goods and services, where physical means of scaling may not be as important (though see perhaps with Moore and Dennard). Though those which deal with physical stuff do seem to have higher counts; see below. > The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class. Not sure if this is completely accurate. Kodak topped out at 145,000 employees in 1988: * https://rbj.net/2017/09/13/kodaks-decades-of-decline/ https://rbj.net/2017/09/13/kodaks-decades-of-decline/ Apple has 164,000; Microsoft has 228,000; Amazon has 1,610,000. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers
- didibus 1y ago
  What if you adjust by market cap?
- specproc 1y ago
  Heh, I was musing on something I'd read recently that had Kodak as a case study. It was compared with Instagram which had about 10-15 staff when it was bought for USD 1bn. WhatsApp similarly small. I hear tech can be big employers, maybe I'm overselling my point a bit there. That said, the trend is very much towards smaller operations, and a large headcount is not at all required for large money. My overall point is that profits that at one time would require a town, or be a major part of a city's economy, can be made with a small office's worth of staff.
  - throw0101a 1y ago
    > My overall point is that profits that at one time would require a town, or be a major part of a city's economy, can be made with a small office's worth of staff. This has been true for most industries even 'with-in themselves': it's called productivity growth. The number of employees (or man-hours) needed to create (say) a tonne of steel has dropped a lot, so where previously you had 'steel towns', now a plant may just have a very few (and produce more tonnage than they've ever done).
yieldcrv 1y ago
People talk about physical goods and differences in scaling needs, one thing that bothers or excites me is noticing what the market tolerates. Many companies employed (and still employ) orders of magnitude more people than necessary just to be taken seriously. The executive team and board is stacked and diluting ownership just to get in rooms for more support and investors. This was arguably never necessary, and in many markets people still believe they need to stack the deck and print employment numbers for any incorporated idea they have. The market reality changes far faster than the culture and I love seeing evolution of markets where individuals test a theoretical reality and do it. I'm glad that people noticed and tried to keep ownership with parallel voting classes, and smaller personnel. I think there are some negatives and that exchanges can go back to enforcing listing guidelines which factor in ownership structure. But even amongst private companies and family offices, I think its interesting when people approach wealth acquisition in ways that match the liquidity of the markets more than the culture, for example, most billionaires stop trading or trying anything because they are afraid of losing money. While the liqiudity from the central bank and market reforms has gotten so much higher over just the last 10 years, that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to trade up to a $60bn portfolio size in the public markets (Bill Hwang). Its still only a matter of time before someone does it successfully and takes it to far larger amounts. Elon Musk sold nearly $40bn of Tesla shares in his court forced acquisition of Twitter, and that's just one stock ticker. Just a matter of time before someone leverages the liquidity in a more diverse portfolio of momentum stocks and has hundreds of billions without any personnel around them. I'm excited to see this capability. Being able to convert assets to another asset at this speed and scale is something state actors and even Mansa Musa could never do. And the goal isn't done until everything can be valued within milliseconds and its value transferred to another owner, fractionally, with derivatives for future delivery on top. Liquidity is the game. Just move to the next idea if liquidity isn't there as companies like Kodak from days of old are not necessary.
- achierius 1y ago
  Order of magnitude, sure perhaps, even if not a given. But orders of magnitude? No, that doesn't match with my experience or historical evidence at all.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
tomr75 1y ago
flip-side is one person can add a billion dollars of value
- SamBam 1y ago
  Does that billion dollars actually provide a living wage for over 100,000 people for years on end? Because companies like Kodak did.
camdroidw 1y ago
Another way to put it: people with lopsided unwholesome lifestyle but genius minds trying to get rich but not realising that money alone isn't what makes life, life.
HexPhantom 1y ago
Companies like Kodak, IBM, and GE weren't just employers - they were ecosystems. Entire towns thrived around them.
amelius 1y ago
I sympathize but it could also be that the benefits are now distributed across entire supply chains?

squigz 1y ago

I don't deny wealth disparity is very much a thing, but this doesn't seem the point to make it. How many people does Google employ? Amazon? Apple? Probably as much or more than a small town.

specproc 1y ago
Fair point, see my response to the commenter above.
_aavaa_ 1y ago
How many Kodak workers had to pee in bottles, or needed suicide nets around their company dorms?
- solardev 1y ago
  Hard to say for sure, but I think we can all agree it was a company full of negatives...
joegibbs 1y ago
Amazon has 1.5m, it's more on the level of a small country. Google is only at 180k, just small city level.
- lr4444lr 1y ago
  You're counting warehouse and delivery workers though in that number, which IIRC is the significant majority. Google doesn't move physical products. (At least, not anything near that scale.)
fennecbutt 1y ago
Yeah and how many of those people are on 0 hour contracts with a minimum wage that's barely been adjusted for 30 years.

throw0101a 1y ago

> Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. The 'tech companies' (equivalent) of the past tended to deal with physical goods, and so needed physical means of scaling to become as large as they did. More recent tech companies are often software goods and services, where physical means of scaling may not be as important (though see perhaps with Moore and Dennard). Though those which deal with physical stuff do seem to have higher counts; see below. > The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class. Not sure if this is completely accurate. Kodak topped out at 145,000 employees in 1988: * https://rbj.net/2017/09/13/kodaks-decades-of-decline/ https://rbj.net/2017/09/13/kodaks-decades-of-decline/ Apple has 164,000; Microsoft has 228,000; Amazon has 1,610,000. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

didibus 1y ago
What if you adjust by market cap?
specproc 1y ago
Heh, I was musing on something I'd read recently that had Kodak as a case study. It was compared with Instagram which had about 10-15 staff when it was bought for USD 1bn. WhatsApp similarly small. I hear tech can be big employers, maybe I'm overselling my point a bit there. That said, the trend is very much towards smaller operations, and a large headcount is not at all required for large money. My overall point is that profits that at one time would require a town, or be a major part of a city's economy, can be made with a small office's worth of staff.
- throw0101a 1y ago
  > My overall point is that profits that at one time would require a town, or be a major part of a city's economy, can be made with a small office's worth of staff. This has been true for most industries even 'with-in themselves': it's called productivity growth. The number of employees (or man-hours) needed to create (say) a tonne of steel has dropped a lot, so where previously you had 'steel towns', now a plant may just have a very few (and produce more tonnage than they've ever done).

yieldcrv 1y ago

People talk about physical goods and differences in scaling needs, one thing that bothers or excites me is noticing what the market tolerates. Many companies employed (and still employ) orders of magnitude more people than necessary just to be taken seriously. The executive team and board is stacked and diluting ownership just to get in rooms for more support and investors. This was arguably never necessary, and in many markets people still believe they need to stack the deck and print employment numbers for any incorporated idea they have. The market reality changes far faster than the culture and I love seeing evolution of markets where individuals test a theoretical reality and do it. I'm glad that people noticed and tried to keep ownership with parallel voting classes, and smaller personnel. I think there are some negatives and that exchanges can go back to enforcing listing guidelines which factor in ownership structure. But even amongst private companies and family offices, I think its interesting when people approach wealth acquisition in ways that match the liquidity of the markets more than the culture, for example, most billionaires stop trading or trying anything because they are afraid of losing money. While the liqiudity from the central bank and market reforms has gotten so much higher over just the last 10 years, that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to trade up to a $60bn portfolio size in the public markets (Bill Hwang). Its still only a matter of time before someone does it successfully and takes it to far larger amounts. Elon Musk sold nearly $40bn of Tesla shares in his court forced acquisition of Twitter, and that's just one stock ticker. Just a matter of time before someone leverages the liquidity in a more diverse portfolio of momentum stocks and has hundreds of billions without any personnel around them. I'm excited to see this capability. Being able to convert assets to another asset at this speed and scale is something state actors and even Mansa Musa could never do. And the goal isn't done until everything can be valued within milliseconds and its value transferred to another owner, fractionally, with derivatives for future delivery on top. Liquidity is the game. Just move to the next idea if liquidity isn't there as companies like Kodak from days of old are not necessary.

achierius 1y ago
Order of magnitude, sure perhaps, even if not a given. But orders of magnitude? No, that doesn't match with my experience or historical evidence at all.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

tomr75 1y ago

flip-side is one person can add a billion dollars of value

SamBam 1y ago
Does that billion dollars actually provide a living wage for over 100,000 people for years on end? Because companies like Kodak did.

camdroidw 1y ago

Another way to put it: people with lopsided unwholesome lifestyle but genius minds trying to get rich but not realising that money alone isn't what makes life, life.

HexPhantom 1y ago

Companies like Kodak, IBM, and GE weren't just employers - they were ecosystems. Entire towns thrived around them.

amelius 1y ago

I sympathize but it could also be that the benefits are now distributed across entire supply chains?