[agentgumshoe]

I think the simplest way to measure that is by asking 'what would we truly lose if this company disappeared tomorrow?'. With one follow-up question of 'how easily could the important bits actually be replaced?'

[danaris]

No; that kind of thought experiment heavily biases in favor of large organizations.

It's much more helpful to ask, "What would we lose if this company were broken up tomorrow into parts no larger than (say) the median company size?"

[agentgumshoe]

I think it does the opposite, it makes you think about whether the company is big because of its products/services or other reasons. It's not a yes/no answer, it's a prompt.

[palata]

> 'what would we truly lose if this company disappeared tomorrow?'

I guess such a big company is here because they managed to create a need. The question may be: "were we really worse off before we had what this company built?".

Example: if GitHub disappears tomorrow, that's likely a pretty big problem. But we were fine before GitHub, we just had different (not worse) workflows. GitHub created a dependency.