> Take FB as an example. FB have 60k employees, 12X the 2012 IPO number. It also costs 12X to run facebook today. They don't do that much more today than in 2012.

They do.

In 2012, their advertising revenue was $5B. In 2020, it was $86B. They are "doing" 17x more now.

I don't mean that from your perspective of revenue leading to wasteful spending, but from an advertising product perspective. If you're making $86B in advertising revenue, then every junior data scientist whose entire job might be to optimise ad click-throughs for cat food in Mongolia by 3% is a net win for the company. If they are getting better at cat food ads, they are doing more.