People constantly underestimate the size of the support staff needed to keep the engineering team productive. For every ten or so software engineers you hire to work on a new product or feature, you're going to need 5-10 QA engineers, another project manager, another product manager, maybe another build engineer, maybe more internal IT staff... You need these people. Software doesn't just leap from developers' fingertips directly onto store shelves. And now that that program's engineering manager has so many more direct reports, that manager needs another manager to split his duties up... And now that there are so many managers, their Director maybe needs a personal assistant to help keep her schedule better organized. All that extra staff eventually requires more HR support, more people working in facilities/building management, more janitors. On the business side, this product is going to need a few more marketers, maybe salespeople to sell it, business analysts to track its effectiveness, and so on. After a couple rounds of this, the company looks up and somehow has 3,000 people and HN sneers about what could they all be doing...