From my experience, this answer usually belies someone who doesn’t fully understand the system and problems of the business. The easy answer when overwhelmed is “we need more people.” To use a manufacturing analogy, you can cover up a lot of quality issues with increased throughout, but it makes for an awfully inefficient system.

Borrowing costs went to nearly zero. That's not the same thing. You have to repay the money, you just don't have to repay it with interest.

I would have assumed people generally know this, but everybody (and I do mean everybody) talks like they don't know this. I would like to assume that "money is free" is just a shorthand, buuuut... again... these arguments! People like that EM talk like it was literally free money raining from the sky that could be spent (gone!) without it ever having to be repaid.

If you watched any of the long-form interviews Musk gave immediately after the acquisition, he made the point that if he hadn't bailed out Twitter, it had maybe 3 months of runway left before imploding.

Doubling headcount without a clear vision of how that would double revenues is madness. It is doubly so in orgs like Twitter or Netflix where their IT was already over-complicated.

It's too difficult for me to clearly and succinctly explain all the myriad ways in which a sudden inrush of noobs -- outnumbering the old guard -- can royally screw up something that is already at the edge of human capability due to complexity. There is just no way in which it would help matters. I could list the fundamental problems with that notion for hours.