> I suppose that halving productivity won't go unnoticed. Why smaller wins like 10% don't matter to them?
Believe it or not, Silicon Valley BigCos are much better at seeing that this matters, and building custom stuff for their employees when necessary. It's not a coincidence that about half of the top 10 companies in the US by market cap are from SV.
From a traditional perspective, Google and Facebook are "just" advertising firms if you see where their revenue comes from; but they have historically done things that go counter to the traditional cubicle farm company like allowing employees more freedom about what to work on, putting in bright colors and such. These things have an effect on productivity, it's just harder to demonstrate a direct relation.
Too much noise frankly, and often actual output, let along profit, has little to do with any individual employees productivity. And most employees are part of a relatively small silo which would require extensive work to really figure out how to make them productive, and if they got more productive, the rest of the organization is likely to tarpit them.
Think of it as an army - infantry may be visible on the ground, but no matter how awesome an individual infantry person is, their transport folks, logistics folks, planning folks, etc. have a far more important role in winning the war. And everyone has to be effective, or that war won’t be won.
