random questions | May 2026
Q1: What does a more flexible structure for work look like when companies have different human capital requirements at different stages?
Companies grow, but they also change in nature. Yet when a company reduces its workforce, this is often seen as an indicator of negative performance rather than just a shift in business needs.
For example, some people today want to build companies with as few employees as possible. They could probably build more efficiently by bringing in more people at specific stages, like during product development, and scaling back when that phase ends. But they have limited employment structures to choose from. Contracting works for projects but rarely provides the continuitiy you often need after an engagement ends. And hiring full-time requires the foresight to know what will happen next, a degree of certainty that you will need this person tomorrow--a difficult premonition to make, especially now.
Both employees and companies tell themselves, and each other, this weird lie that they are committed for their entire careers, or until something bad (that neither of them could have predicted or can do anything about) happens.
What if we stopped doing that? What would a structure better suited to how work functions today look like?