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The book Loonshots by Safi Bahcall describes this phenomena quite well. There's a "phase transition" of incentives at around 150 people that can be fatal to man
by LarsDu88 3y ago
The book Loonshots by Safi Bahcall describes this phenomena quite well. There's a "phase transition" of incentives at around 150 people that can be fatal to many organizations.
The secret sauce is how a startup goes past this headcount. Ideally many software companies quite honestly don't need more than 150 people!
- K0balt 3y agoThis argues in favor of organizations that hold close to their core business and allow for the additional cost of outsourcing non-core functions.
- mjklin 3y agoSee Miller’s “Barbarians to Bureaucrats” for a description of the full corporate lifecycle. Barbarian -> builder -> explorer -> administrator -> bureaucrat -> aristocrat.
- Terretta 3y agoSee also "Dunbar's Number": Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number The world scaled past this millenia ago. You can scale your company past it too.
- yousif_123123 3y agoWhen they say "100" or "150", do they usually mean total company size or number of engineering+product people?
- NickC25 3y agoTotal company size. The book argues, if I recall correctly, that over that size, there are too many moving parts within the organization to be focused on anything but preservation of the organization at large, rather than the product or service the organization offers. It's been a while since I read the book but it was quite a good read - highly recommended.