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I can't think of (m)any situations where tripling the size of a dev team in 6 months makes sense. Did it here?

by pbreit 9y ago

ben_jones 9y ago
I imagine many large projects start out as small experimental ones. Once they get validated you light a fire under them (with money) and expand the team. IIRC Docker started out as a 2 man team - I'd imagine they had a doubling or a tripling that was well justified after that.
trhway 9y ago
some companies seems to do it before IPO/acquisition. Of course sustaining such an inflated company post-event is another story. In the title story : >In 2016 we were acquired through a private investment consortium and given an injection of funding in order to 'go faster'. I'd not be surprised if the consortium would sell them for a nice profit soon. Would look like a typical private equity operation.
- codingdave 9y ago
  ... on a 20 year old product. This was not a market-driven need, this was an investor-driven push for profit. It is their company, so their call to make, but it needs to be made clear that this was a calculated risk by the business owners to make money, not a launch strategy for a new product.
jamesmishra 9y ago
If you have absolutely runaway traction in a winner-take-all market, then tripling the size of your dev team in 6 months can make a lot of sense. Facebook, Google, and Uber have all had periods of growth that fast. For example, Uber's overall employee headcount went from ~2500 at the start of 2015 to ~13,000 at the end of 2016 -- although that includes non-engineering hires. But for companies that aren't Facebook/Google/Uber? A slower growth rate is almost always the better decision.
zacsky 9y ago
That is a good question! It made sense from the perspective that the product we were building was good but a little 'behind' our competitors and we needed to catch up. The scaling has allowed us to tackle new projects that utilise the underlying platform that we would have otherwise not been able to even consider.
swsieber 9y ago
I can think of one - you're a single product company that wants to add a couple of new products without slowing down your current pace.

I can't think of (m)any situations where tripling the size of a dev team in 6 months makes sense. Did it here?

by pbreit 9y ago

I can't think of (m)any situations where tripling the size of a dev team in 6 months makes sense. Did it here?

I imagine many large projects start out as small experimental ones. Once they get validated you light a fire under them (with money) and expand the team. IIRC Docker started out as a 2 man team - I'd imagine they had a doubling or a tripling that was well justified after that.

trhway 9y ago

some companies seems to do it before IPO/acquisition. Of course sustaining such an inflated company post-event is another story. In the title story : >In 2016 we were acquired through a private investment consortium and given an injection of funding in order to 'go faster'. I'd not be surprised if the consortium would sell them for a nice profit soon. Would look like a typical private equity operation.

codingdave 9y ago
... on a 20 year old product. This was not a market-driven need, this was an investor-driven push for profit. It is their company, so their call to make, but it needs to be made clear that this was a calculated risk by the business owners to make money, not a launch strategy for a new product.

jamesmishra 9y ago

If you have absolutely runaway traction in a winner-take-all market, then tripling the size of your dev team in 6 months can make a lot of sense. Facebook, Google, and Uber have all had periods of growth that fast. For example, Uber's overall employee headcount went from ~2500 at the start of 2015 to ~13,000 at the end of 2016 -- although that includes non-engineering hires. But for companies that aren't Facebook/Google/Uber? A slower growth rate is almost always the better decision.

zacsky 9y ago

That is a good question! It made sense from the perspective that the product we were building was good but a little 'behind' our competitors and we needed to catch up. The scaling has allowed us to tackle new projects that utilise the underlying platform that we would have otherwise not been able to even consider.

swsieber 9y ago

I can think of one - you're a single product company that wants to add a couple of new products without slowing down your current pace.