[lifeformed]

Why do companies have to get so big? Does anyone value equilibrium? Let's say I make the perfect app that does exactly what it needs to do, and no more. It seems way more logical and appealing to keep things tight: just have a core team to maintain the product and company. No more features need to be added, it's already perfect.

What's the point of expanding? Would you even be making much more money per employee by growing huge? If I were the founder, I would much rather try to get the company stable, and have it become a passive income stream and have the time to make a new thing, instead of spending my life milking every last drop out of it until it becomes an irreparably bloated mess.

[social_quotient]

Typically it’s because these companies end up on “the juice” and owe investors some multiple and enough scale to get acquired.

They hire talent with the same growth mindset... not the sustainability mindset. They don’t tend to think, “what moves do I need to make to be around 100 years from now?”, they think “how can I get 20x growth in X time”. Unfortunately now they are thinking “how can I keep my job”.

[engineerman]

This is a good reason (hypergrowth), but there is another reason -- HR.

At most companies, tech or otherwise, it is hard to get more pay by doing a better job. You often cannot just get paid more for delivering faster, or delivering less buggy code, or closing more bugs than anyone else.

You get paid more for having a team. HR uses "# reports" as a metric for pay at almost every company i've been to. So I hire. I hire 3 when i need 1. I hire 5 when i need 2. Ideally, you end up doing no technical work and "managing up" the whole time. Recipe for success.

You set the metrics and i behave accordingly.