> Sounds like you think there’s people that shouldn’t be needed? Are they on their way to a layoff or is the company happily holding on to them?

> If there are no layoffs in their future, they must be creating value you can’t yet see.

I've been involved in a few projects where the value appeared clear at the beginning, but by the end there was little value.

In one case the project failed due to incompetence and mismanagement: Basically, the project dragged on and on until it missed its market window. (What stinks is it was basically a port of a Visual Basic sales tool to a more modern v2.)

In another case I was hired into a machine learning project in a company where everyone spent a lot of time justifying their jobs. The project ultimately didn't "improve" over the non-machine-learning approach, and devolved into a "solution in search of a problem".

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As far as why the company held onto the people involved? (I left after both projects.) That's harder to explain, but I like to think of an analogy to a king holding on to a standing army: It's there when you need it, and your soldiers aren't helping the rival kingdom.

A different way to say it: One of the downsides to working in a large company is that a lot of the people there are "warm butts on seats." The company could function without them. Many of the people you work with have competence issues. You're probably a "warm butt on a seat" too, and may have some competence issues. That's why I like working for smaller companies: they can't afford to be fat.