> then I remember a comparison on HN about how booking.com is O(50) people and Airbnb is O(2000) total
One thing to ask yourself - is the company chasing growth? A company like AirBnB or Twitter could absolutely run on a much smaller team if they agreed to mostly abandon growth. They could focus on reducing tech debt, make architectural decisions that reduced flexibility in the name of reliability and lower maintenance, and then eventually lay off a huge portion of their staff.
Instead they have a growth thesis - that growth requires investment, having to favor velocity over unit economics, etc. The higher the growth target, the more inefficiencies you take on.
One thing to ask yourself - is the company chasing growth? A company like AirBnB or Twitter could absolutely run on a much smaller team if they agreed to mostly abandon growth. They could focus on reducing tech debt, make architectural decisions that reduced flexibility in the name of reliability and lower maintenance, and then eventually lay off a huge portion of their staff.
Instead they have a growth thesis - that growth requires investment, having to favor velocity over unit economics, etc. The higher the growth target, the more inefficiencies you take on.