Re: Why Do Corporations Have to Grow?

I'd like to thank eaplmx and Stacksmith for their responses. They've given me food for thought 🙂

I do understand that some projects have to be big by nature: the first moon landing, the development of new microchips with ever smaller transistors, large infrastructure projects, etc.

To give some real world examples that I feel are only driven by ambition rather than usefulness:

• I know of a company that is profitable within its area in several countries, even market leading and close to a monopolistic position. Yet it's burning venture capital at a rapid pace in order to establish itself in more than a dozen other countries which will, if plans hold, only be profitable in four or five years. Hundreds more people have been hired to make this possible, adding several more layers of management and necessitating a large re-organisation in order to continuing being effective.
• Another company that was not by any means leading in its market, but has ~40 employees and around 170,000 customers. It's profitable and in no way threatened within its niche. Yet it agrees to be sold to a larger company.
• A window construction company that had around 50 employees and held a near-monopoly in its region but still decided to expand country wide.

For all of these I feel that they were "big enough" and had a steady income stream that provided plenty of economic sustenance for everybody within the company. Their expansion looks to be only driven by a want from management or founders to make further economic excess.

I guess it's greed, or an ambition to "be someone" or... something. I don't really understand it, even though I at one point had the same mindset. I wanted to build something big and be well known. It's just that I know feel that I've matured from that position and understand the pointlessness of the hours one has to put in just to reach a point where one has more money than one can reasonably spend on necessities. And the end result is a top heavy organisation with a very large percentage of non-profitable employees; people who are only there to control or take care of other people or money.

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=> Stacksmith's reply post. | eaplmx's reply post.

-- CC0 ew0k, 2022-01-26