In 1985, the most powerful tech company in the United States was IBM. It was a giant of its era, boasting the highest market cap and the most substantial profits in the world. To keep this massive empire running, IBM employed nearly 400,000 people. Getting a job at IBM meant securing a stable middle-class life for an entire family. Back then, the logic of corporate expansion was linear: to make more money, you needed more people. IBM's prosperity directly supported the dignified lives of 400,000 middle-class families and created millions of jobs in surrounding service industries. It was a form of capitalism where everyone got a share of the pie. Now, let’s look at today. The current tech giant is Nvidia. Adjusted for inflation, Nvidia’s market cap today is 20 times that of IBM back then, and its profit scale is 5 times larger. By the old logic, Nvidia should be a super empire with millions of employees, right? The reality is quite the opposite. Nvidia’s total workforce is only around 30,000—about one-tenth of IBM’s at its peak. This is an incredible achievement, but it’s also deeply unsettling: creating 20 times the wealth with just one-tenth of the manpower.