> There are per-employee overheads (training comes to mind, probably tax & conditions law too). The more significant overhead is internal communication. Recent

> There are per-employee overheads (training comes to mind, probably tax & conditions law too). The more significant overhead is internal communication. Recently, after coming back from a week-long vacation, I spent an entire day catching up on unread chat messages and e-mails. [1] In a group of N people where everyone needs to communicate with each other, you will have N(N-1)/2 lines of communication, i.e. communication overheads per person even scale quadratically instead of just linearly (like the things that you mention do). Having a hierarchical org structure alleviates this somewhat by centralizing the flow of communication, but this introduces a different set of inefficiencies which most people around here are intimately familiar with. I used to work 70% part-time (i.e. 5.6 hours per day) for a while, accepting the trade-off of less money, but more free time. However, as I ascended through the ranks, I ended up going back to full-time because my current position as senior IC involves so much communication work (meetings, mails, workshops, etc.) that I would not be able to do any actual programming if I were still on 70%. And the programming part is what I like the most about the profession, and also where I feel like I produce the most value, so I'm not quitting that. [1] I opted not to "Mark all as read" because I have learnt over the years that it's actually very valuable to be up-to-date on what people in adjacent teams are up to, even as an IC.