The New Status Game for Companies: Fewer Employees

“If you start stripping out everything that is not unique to your company, you’re left with just a few people who make the unique parts of the company. And then add a few people who need to explain its unique benefits to the market. Imagine your 100 person company going to 6 people. Imagine your 1000 person company going to 20. How much faster coul... See more

But this is changing: there is a new status game brewing between companies concerning who has the fewest number of employees, centered around who is engineering greater amounts output with less staff.

Because revenues of private companies tend to be secret, most venture-backed companies have historically bragged about how many employees they have. A CEO will say: “we went from 100 to 200 employees last year” as if fast employee growth is always a good thing.