>> > Firstly, I have yet to encounter a company with a hiring process that is actually, provably, repeatedly tied to any of that company’s business needs.

>> What do you mean? Why do companies hire then?

Sadly this is very common -- the bigger and more profitable the company the more common it is. Companies often hire for non-business related reasons for several major reasons:

1. Bench strength -- Hire top talent before you need it so you are ready to fire when you have a strategic project. Ideally, hire away talent your competitors might hire. In many ways, this is a good thing.

2. "Burn the Budget" - Divisions will often lose budget if they dont spend it, and they may lose it in future years when they need it ("well you got it last year and you didnt use it, so this year you dont get it...") -- so many divisions will hire to burn the budget and use it just so they dont lose budget when they really really need it.

3. HR - It is common for HR to institute Crazy-8s policies or some variant of it -- where you only get promoted if you have 8 (or N) people working for you. Naturally all sorts of non business related tasks suddenly pop up and people hire just enough to get promoted. This is very common in organizations where promotion and pay is linked to non business metrics (how much budget you control, how many people report to you) rather than business metrics (revenue delivered, revenue enabled, churn reduced, traffic increased, etc.) Often your boss themselves wants to be promoted and needs 8 middle-managers 8 under them to get promoted. And so on up the chain. Almost half the HR departments in my ~20yr career institute such a policy, whether it is internally known or not. It is of course more common in organizations which are not metrics driven.