Manufacturing companies are hiring the same way they did in 1995.
Startups just figured out there's a better way.
Carta just published headcount data across 50,000+ US startups. Net headcount grew by only 68K over the last 10 quarters combined. Back in Q4 2021, they were adding 111K people in a single quarter.
Startups can still afford to hire - they just realized there are smarter ways to scale. Marketing copy? AI handles it. Design concepts? Midjourney does first drafts. Junior dev work? Cursor writes half the code. They're still hiring for the stuff that needs humans, but they stopped defaulting to "throw bodies at the problem."
Manufacturers are still running the 2005 playbook. Need more technical capacity? Hire more engineers. Product getting complex? Hire specialists. Senior guy retiring? Find a replacement and train them for 18 months. Every time, same answer: hire someone.
Manufacturing companies are profitable and their competitors do the same thing. No pressure to question whether hiring is the right answer. Startups test new tools constantly, look for edges, try to do things 10x faster or cheaper. They can't afford to keep doing things the old way just because "that's how we've always done it."
The same constraints are coming for everyone. You can't find enough skilled people. Training takes forever. Expertise walks out the door when someone retires. Companies that figure out how to scale without just adding headcount will have a massive advantage over the ones still hiring their way to growth.
Startups already learned this lesson. Manufacturing is about to.
Startups just figured out there's a better way.
Carta just published headcount data across 50,000+ US startups. Net headcount grew by only 68K over the last 10 quarters combined. Back in Q4 2021, they were adding 111K people in a single quarter.
Startups can still afford to hire - they just realized there are smarter ways to scale. Marketing copy? AI handles it. Design concepts? Midjourney does first drafts. Junior dev work? Cursor writes half the code. They're still hiring for the stuff that needs humans, but they stopped defaulting to "throw bodies at the problem."
Manufacturers are still running the 2005 playbook. Need more technical capacity? Hire more engineers. Product getting complex? Hire specialists. Senior guy retiring? Find a replacement and train them for 18 months. Every time, same answer: hire someone.
Manufacturing companies are profitable and their competitors do the same thing. No pressure to question whether hiring is the right answer. Startups test new tools constantly, look for edges, try to do things 10x faster or cheaper. They can't afford to keep doing things the old way just because "that's how we've always done it."
The same constraints are coming for everyone. You can't find enough skilled people. Training takes forever. Expertise walks out the door when someone retires. Companies that figure out how to scale without just adding headcount will have a massive advantage over the ones still hiring their way to growth.
Startups already learned this lesson. Manufacturing is about to.
