[SXX]

They tried to take sustainable B2B middleware business and make new Google out of it. And they keep failing, but still paying exorbitant amounts to their execs.

According to their SEC fillings their staff almost tripled in just 4 years

> Dec 31, 2022 7,703

> Dec 31, 2021 5,245

> Dec 31, 2020 4,001

> Dec 31, 2019 2,715

Development of game engine is costly and take a lot of resources, but they already had a successful product back in 2019 and long before that. With all that hiring quality of their software was more or less constant (and not too high as always) which means all recent growth was not in their core business.

[somenameforme]

It's relevant to also add that the entirety of Epic Games is less than 4,000 people worldwide. That's not only for a vastly more advanced game engine, but also for numerous projects like Fortnite, a game store, just absurd amounts of educational material being published, and so on.

I don't really get why companies keep hiring themselves to death. It clearly does not translate to meaningful productivity gains, yet sends their labor and related costs skyrocketing. It's so alien to me from the outside.

[Proziam]

Companies don't hire themselves to death. Managers hire themselves towards promotions and kill the company in the process.

[bathtub365]

Managers need budget and headcount to hire against. This is given to them by the company with the goal of growing.

[Proziam]

In almost every large company the incentive structure is such that hiring is a "win" for everyone involved. It's a win for the HR team doing the hiring, often they have quotas. It's a win for the manager getting more headcount under their umbrella, adds perceived value and status which leads to promotions. It's a win all the way up the ladder, because it adds perceived growth (remember how many VCs used to tell startups to hire and spend fast?).

The decision maker at the top is usually too disconnected from the rank and file to see the bloat. And the ones that aren't tend to be ruthless about headcount.

[gmerc]

That’s not at all now this works. It’s a convenient myth for senior executives to absolve themselves of their own failure to build incentives and sustainable culture.

Managers don’t get headcount without allocation. It needs to be budgeted and approved.

[chaostheory]

This is what happens when you are publicly traded. You become a slave of 3rd party Wall St analyst revenue expectations. Only a few CEOs like Jobs can effectively deal with that. Having a CEO like Riccetiello exacerbates the problem.