An old startup I worked at used customer IDs in communications that started from an arbitrary 5 digit number to give a false impression of our customer base.
It's definitely not how people act these days, at least with indie/solo game developers.
Can you guess what I did in the early days to eventually grow the server to over 2000 real active players?
Maybe some portion of the 2000 organic players were also running bots?
I ran some personal bots back in the Diablo 2 days with D2Loader and some shareware bot plug-in I bought on a shady site for like $12 in ~2003-2004 or so. Wish I could remember the name.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100813125735/http://d2loader.b...
Apparently there are modern versions of D2Loader type software. I haven’t really followed the game or the bot scene much these days, but I like the cat and mouse game in general across the physical and virtual space. Red teaming scratches that itch I guess.
So that if there were only 6 online it’d report 123. Took only a few weeks before I was able to disable it and report the real values.
Employee IDs pretty much start happening when you end up getting actual space that isn't your garage or repurposed residential buildings, especially if you're doing manufacturing of any kind.
Then you might want to have employee IDs if only for minimal security (contractors! Visitors!) or workplace safety reasons (tracking who was left in the building, for example).
It is, also, a sign of "making it somewhere", yes - along with some of the above parts also making up the "corporate social capital".
Similarly using customized paperwork, having logos, branding style etc. all helps to build up a company image that might help in landing sales or investors or whatever.