The Two Levers of Productivity

As an organization, you have two levers to improve: increase meaningful output while using the same amount of resources, or maintain the same meaningful output while decreasing the amount of resources spent. When companies hire people, they’re hoping that their meaningful output will increase far more than the increase in cost, and when companies conduct layoffs, they’re hoping that their meaningful output will reduce much less than their resources.

A plain text business explanation describes two ways an organization can improve: increasing output with the same resources or maintaining output with fewer resources. The joke is the dry, bureaucratic framing of hiring and layoffs as productivity levers, making it useful as a sarcastic reaction to corporate management logic.

• @jemalloc / 1778 2024-10-23