There are also big changes at smaller numbers: ~8, ~30. Before you hit around 10 people, you all fit at a comfortable table and can have reasonable meeting whe

There are also big changes at smaller numbers: ~8, ~30. Before you hit around 10 people, you all fit at a comfortable table and can have reasonable meeting where there's a chance for everyone to talk. It's also a reasonable number for one person to manage that size of a team and be able to check in on the others on a regular basis. It's hard not to know the rest of the team - assuming you work in the same place (big assumption these days). It's more likely at this scale that many people have to have broad skillsets in order to work on whatever is necessary. 25-30 is a size where you start to loose track of the names of new people and don't really know some of the team. It's not possible for one person to do a good job managing all the people, so you've probably already started to break things into subgroups and have more mid-level leaders/managers. There are more likely to be specialists at this scale, but it's hard to manage their workload - either too busy or not enough. As you grow above that size the subdivision and communication issues increase. If you are in an office, you're probably not all in the same room/floor/building. It's likely that there are some people that you almost never see. When someone new is added, you may not meet them for a while. The specialization issues are different. There's more push and pull around what specialist areas to add or drop, but some of the sub teams are more self-sustaining and managing. However when things go poorly, expect re-orgs and layoffs. Loyalties are more to the local team level, not the overall organization. There's more likely some us vs them within the company.