![]() We fall in love with our ideas, but they're not all good ideas. ![]() Even when PayPal had 20K employees and $10B in revenue, everyone still complained that they "couldn't get resources." Once you're on that treadmill, it never stops. If you study any big tech company, you'll see that 90% of their growth came from 10% of their work. People used to joke that Google had 60K employees, but only needed 1K (search + ads). But corporate bloat doesn't stop with sensible projects, it grows unchecked). PayPal needed to get better at risk, compliance, customer service, and core tech. Some of it was necessary, but a lot really wasn't. They brought in corporate playbooks and built huge teams. ![]() So what about the other 10K+ employees? After the acquisition, eBay hired "grownups," from Visa, Amex, McKinsey and some banks. I don't know Twitter, but if you study PayPal's history, you'll see that 90% of their early growth came from 5 big things: eBay, simple email & HTML tools, integrating with shopping carts, etc. I'd completely forgotten that moment until Elon announced that he'd "fire 75% of Twitter employees." Could they survive? "Honestly, I bet you could fire 70% of them and the company would keep running just fine. "I've run a payments company, it's not that complicated. He couldn't understand why we had so many employees. He'd just gotten to PayPal’s campus, and he was in shock. Late in my time there, maybe ten years ago, we acquired a company, and I early to a meeting with one of the founders. These big tech layoffs remind me of another crazy PayPal story… this one’s about how to avoid corporate bloat in your startup. Was firing 50% of Twitter employees a smart move?
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