None of these companies are trying to maximize profit-per-employee, just profit. There's obviously a diminishing return with each subsequent employee, but that

None of these companies are trying to maximize profit-per-employee, just profit. There's obviously a diminishing return with each subsequent employee, but that's no deterrent for larger companies. It's pretty reasonable that healthy companies will have per-employee profits around the average salary: if a current employee "pays" for a new employee, there's no real reason not to hire one. If you search for software companies that do try to maximize their per-employee profit, you find companies like 37Signals and id software, which I imagine are at least an order of magnitude above any other organization that's been mentioned. They're what make the business of software special, not Microsoft and Google.