If we're throwing around conventional aphorisms, one could just as easily argue that most companies simply optimize for maximizing profits by minimizing labor costs, and therefore have an incentive to eliminate redundant labor. Heaven knows that Uber's primary goal for the next few years is profitability. Why, then, wouldn't Uber just get rid of all of these paper TPS report empires? Should be simple enough, right?
The reality is that it's a lot more complicated. I think GP's comment about armchair quarterbacking is an important one, and I think this comment as a good example of that. A fun joke I've heard is that the mark of a senior engineer is how often they say "Well, It Depends™". It mostly alludes to the general tendency to avoid simple explanations of complex systems the more senior one gets.I think the same applies in the context of organization building.
There was a good comment a while ago from a former Uber engineer that broke down just why the Uber app is so big: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346
If you take that, and try to imagine that it's not just engineers, it's also Product Managers, Designers that feed into the raw R&D; and the fact that Uber actually operates in multiple business lines (Eats, Rides, Freight, Bikeshare, Transit) and then the operationalization of all of those features, including customer support, biz ops, product marketing, etc. And then wrap all that up into the core organizational infrastructure necessary to support all that: FP&A, HR, etc. It all adds up! And that's just the current businesses we see, you also have portions of all of that feeding into the numerous exploratory efforts they probably have underway into new business lines.
Even with this thread, I have to say I'm kind of a hypocrite, since I'm one of these "support role" guys in my own company. I make it a goal every day to try to draw a clear understandable line between my work and the company making money. Some days it's not easy after 8 hours of TPS reports. I've been in roles where to this day I can't figure out how what I did made the company money. It was a lot simpler to explain when I was directly making the product.
I agree with the overall sentiment though: "What are all these people doing?" is a valid question against lots of Silicon Valley companies who are currently growing for the sake of growing. Yes, you need a few lawyers. Do you need 100 lawyers, each with executive assistants, and lawyer managers of other lawyers? Why? What specifically are they all doing? Why can't you do it with 90 lawyers? or 80?
I've worked for companies ranging from 12 people up to 100,000+. I've seen companies that were legitimately understaffed, but also companies where I don't think anyone (including the employees themselves) could articulate why all these people were needed. Outwardly, it's always explained with some nebulous reason like "Oh, what we do is oh-so-complex! We need people to, um, manage the complexity, and uh, create synergies." Yea, and they need exec assistants and interns, and their own staff of sub-complexity-wranglers, who also need assistants, and soon it's complexity-wranglers all the way down, and nobody knows what any of them are actually doing, but they're all sending E-mails to each other!
The unspoken side is that most companies simply measure your importance by how many people are under you, so everyone tries to hire as many people as they can get budget for, and build their empire. But it's an empire of paper, of TPS reports! These people aren't really doing anything, but they make this SVP's org bigger than the other SVP's org, and the CEO can tell everyone how huge (i.e. important) the company is getting, and that's what's important.