zlacker

This is how BigCo works. They are optimized for resilience and providing predictable cashflows for investors, not efficiency as such. If they had, say, 2 "10x" engineers who were brilliant and could do everything with no red tape or inefficiency, then one or both of them could leave, or demand pay raises, and the company would be screwed - it would be a very brittle, unsustainable period of efficiency.

So, it's better to have 20 1x engineers, with significant slack in the system, who are all interchangeable cogs in a machine that takes tickets in one end and pushes mediocre software out the other end. That way, if 5 or 10 of them leave, they can be replaced, and nobody will tell the difference. If there's a lean quarter, you can lay off half of them, and then rehire a bunch of average randos off the street a few months later, and again, nobody will be able to tell the difference.

Also, the mayor will visit the grand opening of the new office, and the media will write a lovely story about how many jobs have been "created", and the company will be able to negotiate some tax breaks for creating so many mediocre jobs.

You might find things are better at a mom & pop, or startup, or maybe outside of a big city.

>>tacost+(OP)
And notably, totally interchangeable cogs is exactly what a startup should not want. For the reason that it requires a lot of slack. Startups are supposed to move fast, and if you move fast that means there should be minimal overlap in work between different employees. Layoffs could be fatal at that stage in a company's story.