IME there is a code quality/sanity valley of death between about 50-1000 people, with the lower bound shifting upwards a bit depending on the maturity of the co

IME there is a code quality/sanity valley of death between about 50-1000 people, with the lower bound shifting upwards a bit depending on the maturity of the company's founding/early stage technical contributors. You get more bang for your buck with five of the right people than 50 of the wrong ones in the early stages, and sometimes that determines five years later whether you are drowning in tech debt (bad) or 1000 years ahead of the competition (inefficient, probably) or maybe just barely staying one step ahead of the reaper (optimal, probably). But a lot of companies limp into the valley, get enough revenue to stay alive for a while, and then slowly fade into obscurity the second a nimbler competitor shows up on the scene and eats their lunch. That's why small companies are fun. All that visible impact and you know you won't be mired in the bureaucratic death spiral of a medium-sized company lurching into obscurity!