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by ProblemFactory
1716 days ago
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> Take FB as an example. FB have 60k employees, 12X the 2012 IPO number. It also costs 12X to run facebook today. They don't do that much more today than in 2012. They do. In 2012, their advertising revenue was $5B. In 2020, it was $86B. They are "doing" 17x more now. I don't mean that from your perspective of revenue leading to wasteful spending, but from an advertising product perspective. If you're making $86B in advertising revenue, then every junior data scientist whose entire job might be to optimise ad click-throughs for cat food in Mongolia by 3% is a net win for the company. If they are getting better at cat food ads, they are doing more. |
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That was my point. Revenue rises, and everything else grows with it regardless of need.
Whether or not the marginal junior data scientist is a net win for the company.... I suspect not at a company like FB. Efficiency is hard. Factories are efficient because margins are slim and capital costs are high. FB is the opposite. There's no external disciplinarian forcing managers to find ways of minimizing junior data scientist headcount.
FB profit margin this year is 37%. When margins are that high, there's not much incentive to cut fat. If profit margin is 3%, a 1% efficiency gain is a major win. At 37%... different game.