Re:Why The US Can Beat China: The Facts About SpaceX Costs
by Klinky on Wednesday April 18, 2012 @07:42PM
(#3860760)
Employees are often a sign of growth, though not always. A large employee count often means the company has experienced significant growth and is relatively stable. Even a small company, hiring your first employee means you're probably experiencing growth or see the opportunity for it.
Of course judging a company based only on it's headcount is silly, just like judging that the government must be wasteful and inefficient because of it's headcount.
Re:Why The US Can Beat China: The Facts About SpaceX Costs
by _delirium on Wednesday April 18, 2012 @10:29PM
(#3861131)
Headcounts are a common metric of importance in business, though not the only one. Especially for managers, the phrase "grew the organization from [x] to [y]" is often denominated in units of employees (take a look at google hits for "grew the organization from"). So managers typically have an incentive to increase headcount.
>> Can be said for the private sector as well. Unless you think the private sector is growth averse.
Huh? Employees aren't growth. Employees may be necessary to accomplish/support growth, but that's very different. The difference is that a biz will happily take growth with no employees and will try to avoid employees with no growth.