Whenever these discussions come up, a large contingent of commenters talks about how much headcount a company or product “needs”. But that’s not how growing te

Whenever these discussions come up, a large contingent of commenters talks about how much headcount a company or product “needs”. But that’s not how growing tech companies are resourced. They hire based on what they can afford, in order to maximize growth. This leads to decreasing efficiency, especially if they don’t have the right technology leadership that knows how scale tech teams, but gives them optionality to chase many new growth directions. As long as the growth continues though, no one is too concerned about efficiency at this stage. It’s only later when the growth slows, that the questions come about how many heads are really needed (and what to do about the unmaintainable state of the systems)