[sokoloff]

It’s not necessary for someone to be “[not] doing anything useful”, but a much lower standard of “not doing enough to useful to be worth paying them what we pay them”.

If you have hundreds of people creating $50K/yr of value and you’re paying them $80K/yr, you’re losing money even though they’re all doing something useful.

[drbig]

Good point. And it opens up the broader topic of measuring impact/value.

My personal experience from the startup world is that I fill in "auxiliary" but crucial roles which at the same time are not roles that can have an economic surplus (nah, not even break-even!) if we were to go "a dedicated person for each role".

Paraphrasing one of the up-thread commenters: _Yes, it's hard_.