I see it as four categories, from least employees to most:
1. Desperately trying to make short term cash, and are trying to do their best with fewer employees than needed to maintain the current product. (Twitter is here).
2. Enough staff to maintain the current product, but not significantly innovate.
3. Significantly more than needed to maintain the current product, leaving room for people to work on non-core products that may end up being the next billion dollar project, even if the vast majority flop (Most big tech companies are here).
4. Way too bloated, with not enough projects to work on or not enough revenue to justify the R&D.
The problem is that outsiders have a really really hard time understanding the product complexity of half a billion+ user services.
Comparing OpenAI to the social media sites that this HN post is talking about is a great example. It's a completely different product with completely different challenges than FB, twitter, threads, youtube, whatever.
Another great example is people citing "day in the life" videos that are actually recruiting videos showing the brighter sides of the job. Or people citing employees who claim that the company hired them to do nothing, when in reality it's a recruiter that was hired shortly before hiring slowed.