[candybar]

Once again, this doesn't even make the slightest bit of economic sense and you're once again failing to understand extremely very basic points. No one is saying saying FAANG only competes against each other. It's just that you're completely unable to articulate any actual theory as to what's going on and why anyone would do it. Like which companies are talent-starved vs which companies are part of the cabal? How does the cabal even know which other companies are talent-starved and which other companies are trying to do the same thing they are? How do they even coordinate this? Even assuming your theory (which is simply mathematically impossible) is plausible, do you think all these big company CEOs meet and decide on quotas, so that everyone has to hire X amount? Everyone benefits from hiring less, right? What is the enforcement mechanism here?

Also, it's simply not economically possible for the cabal to be so threatened by the talent-starved companies as to engage in completely self-sabotaging actions to increase their own cost, while these apparently exceptional talent-starved companies are unable to outbid companies that derive no actual value from the talent.

Anyone who's familiar with any type of organization (and even have cursory knowledge of economics) should be able to see that overhiring has mostly to do with the fact that managing a larger team confers status to the manager while the cost is borne by the organization, so there are systemic incentives for managers at all levels to increase and compete for scope, which is inherently inefficient with respect to the goals of the organization at large. Ignoring these dynamics and focusing on implausibly airtight collusion between large entities that are made up of 10s or even 100s of thousands of people that constantly leak everything is just pure naivete.