[potatolicious]

> "Why even have employees then? Why not just milk your monopoly, keep the team lean, and let everybody involved have a big share of the profits?"

So we're seeing this play out. There are two factors that exist in tension here:

- The valuation of many of these companies depend on the perception that they are The Future. Part of that is heavy R&D spending and the reputation that they hire The Best. Even if the company mostly just wants to sit and milk its market position, keeping the stock price afloat requires looking like they're also innovative and forging the future.

- Some companies are embracing the milk-it-for-all-its-worth life stage of their company. You see this in some of the Mag-7 where compensation targets are scaling down, explicit and implicit layoffs, etc. This gear-shifting takes time but IMO is in fact happening.

The tightrope they're all trying to walk is how to do the latter without risking their reputation as the former, because the mythos that they are the engines of future growth is what keeps the stock price ticking.