[etskinner]

Title doesn't reflect the article's title (emphasis mine): "Andreessen Horowitz investor says half of Google's white-collar staff probably do 'no real work'"

Without "probably", it sounds like he has insider information and can say it as a fact. With "probably", it shows that this is an educated, yet falsifiable opinion.

[plorg]

I would suggest that with "investor" and "probably" in the title it's more or less just the mumblings of a crank.

[s_dev]

How do we seperate that from for example the pareto principal where it may be the case that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people or a night security guard who works maybe 5% of the time and the rest is spent watching TV yet still an invaluable part of the company in terms of insurance box checking and PCI compliance etc.

Seems like a common fallacy to just jump in like Elon Musk and start trimming out the perceived false jobs and end up with a company that is weaker than it was originally. I've no doubt the VC is has a case but it's a lot hairer than a simple sentence alludes to. I feel like I end up back where I started -- in that I simply don't know or lack the info to make that call -- many jobs could simply be redundant but redundancy isn't always a bad thing -- espeically in massive tech companies with staff leaving for greener pastures on a whim.