I’m not the one you were referring to, but I have similar experiences. I’m living in Germany, and most bigger companies here have such issues. I also worked for companies in Netherlands and Island, so I assume it’s an European, if not global problem. No one is concerned about keeping people busy. It’s a systemic problem. And there are multiple reasons for it. One reason is that the bigger a company grows, the more hierarchy is necessary. But increasing hierarchy will lead to people doing the work are not the people that are most responsible for it. So we have people that should do the work but they aren’t too motivated because they are not responsible enough - they are too low in hierarchy level. And we have people that are responsible but don’t do the work. They delegate. If something goes wrong or takes too long, they will have enough time and skill to find an excuse. Another issue is that you need more people to get specific things done. At some point in time these things have been done, and you actually don’t need the amount of people anymore. But you can’t quit them because of worker’s laws. You maybe even don’t want to quit them because you think you still need them. People, of course, tend to find reasons why their own work is important. And they will communicate that. And the chance is good you’ll believe that and don’t question it enough. There are more reasons for that. But it’s a fact that in many, many companies the economical results of a lot of employees is almost zero. If you don’t believe this, just google the biggest companies in Germany, pick one, apply for an office job and start to work there. It won’t take a month until you’ll find out. Btw. I don’t want to criticize the situation too much. Probably it’s good that people are employed, even if they don’t work efficiently. Otherwise the unemployment rate would be much higher. Then again, Germany‘s economy is flatlining and a crash is not unlikely.

It's like saying "if you know half of your advertising dollars are wasted, why don't you just cut your ad buy in half?"

I still remember the joke from my first job:

Q: How many people work at this office?

A: About half.

Most people involved like hiring more people.

Workers generally like jobs where the workload is low. Managers gain status by having bigger teams, whether they need the extra people or not. Even investors often prefer hiring (a sign of growth) to layoffs, and executives are mostly concerned with pleasing investors.

Even well run tech companies with money to burn hired more people than they needed.

Companies can lay off thousands of employees and not have it affect growth, profits or, really, the workload of remaining employees. How could that be possible if everyone's work is so crucial?

The people doing the hiring are typically not the people concerned about profits at medium and large sized companies. Sure someone has to approve the headcount numbers, but realistically this is an extremely flawed process.

Why do you think profits are important?