Speaking from experience[1] I attribute this to the "empire-building" mindset that sets in once a company gets funding. It begins innocuously enough. It takes

Speaking from experience[1] I attribute this to the "empire-building" mindset that sets in once a company gets funding. It begins innocuously enough. It takes just one or two mid-level manager empire-builders to join the company. Thanks to the funding, the product and business want growth at all cost which means everything needs to be built and launched yesterday. The engineering-managers say well sure, I need 100 engineers. And so the game begins; the early empire-builders get promoted to dizzy heights. It doesn't take much time for others to take notice that they need to build an empire to get promoted and every mid-level manager is hiring like there's no tomorrow. In no time you have an incredibly bloated org. In this environment not building an empire is not an option; teams with fewer than 10 members don't get new-shiny projects and are brutally sidelined. [1] I've been on both sides. The start-up I was working in got acquired by a behemoth that had skilled empire-builders. My team got massacred. In my next gig I had learned my lessons so hired like crazy and in no time had 40 engineers reporting (direct/indirectly) to me 15 of whom had any real work to do. The rest were building random CRUD apps. In the end, realized that empire-building is not for me; I enjoy running a small tight knight team producing high throughput and impactful work.