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Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

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Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#11

Post by constructrurl »

hariprasadr wrote: post #6
sloaken wrote: post #5

This might not be the first to break, but it will eventually, and if corrected NOW will make things much smoother: Your documentation of processes and procedures is NOT adequate. 'everyone used to know about are getting lost' - oh good thing your documentation makes this clear, because it is obviously their fault. 'New hires take forever to ramp up' - oh good thing you have complete ramp up plan and documentation, be…

So, documentation is the solution? But do people have time to document everything?

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#12

Post by welcome_dragon »

sloaken wrote: post #5

This might not be the first to break, but it will eventually, and if corrected NOW will make things much smoother: Your documentation of processes and procedures is NOT adequate. 'everyone used to know about are getting lost' - oh good thing your documentation makes this clear, because it is obviously their fault. 'New hires take forever to ramp up' - oh good thing you have complete ramp up plan and documentation, be…

Are you saying there's too much undocumented tribal knowledge? If so, I agree

Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#13

Post by tucaz »

Peroni wrote: post #8

Growing companies from ~10 to ~200+ has been my bread and butter for almost 20yrs now. A few relatively universal observations: 1. As sloaken said, your documentation of processes and procedures is NOT adequate. This applies to everything . From your code commit process to how to book vacation days. Document everything early. Notion is your friend. 2. Like it or not, your work culture is going to change. New people o…

Well said. Second all of this.

Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#14

Post by kathir05 »

Slow, inefficient hiring process and desperate to close roles

Adding culturally non-fit team members

Setting process and system to accelerate the speed of execution not to slow down

Finding the harmony with process and speed

Finding the harmony with quality and quantity

My book suggestion is "The One Minute Manager" for team management

Reinforcing Vision and Mission statement of why your startup exists

Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#16

Post by boombapoom »

Peroni wrote: post #8

Growing companies from ~10 to ~200+ has been my bread and butter for almost 20yrs now. A few relatively universal observations: 1. As sloaken said, your documentation of processes and procedures is NOT adequate. This applies to everything . From your code commit process to how to book vacation days. Document everything early. Notion is your friend. 2. Like it or not, your work culture is going to change. New people o…

on point 5, that person may be highly experienced, but its important to know that this highly experienced person must be a good fit for your company size. Often times we assume that hiring an L8 at faang is perfect for a startup and thats usually not the case: they know how to play the big company game, not how to take you from 15 to 100 employees.

Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#17

Post by bsjshshsb »

hariprasadr wrote: post #6
sloaken wrote: post #5

This might not be the first to break, but it will eventually, and if corrected NOW will make things much smoother: Your documentation of processes and procedures is NOT adequate. 'everyone used to know about are getting lost' - oh good thing your documentation makes this clear, because it is obviously their fault. 'New hires take forever to ramp up' - oh good thing you have complete ramp up plan and documentation, be…

So, documentation is the solution? But do people have time to document everything?

Art is knowing what to document. And how to organize it. This is probably not a solved problem and needs constant care and refactoring like the code itself.

Giving people additional documented responsibilities helps. Lucy is responsible for API docs and swagger up to date and for building that out as business needs. Varun is responsible for coding practices docs. And so on. If something is out of date they update it. Use Confluence or Notion or something else good.

Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#18

Post by tyleo »

What I’d be most worried about is an “us vs them” mentality developing. It doesn’t break first but it can develop almost naturally. 10 -> 50 people tends to mean “team of teams” rather than “a team”.

Once this dynamic takes root, it’s much harder to stomp out. I’d be more worried about systemic issues like this than the short term pain from growth.

Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#19

Post by bsjshshsb »

People need to transition from 100% code* to 80-90% code and 10-20% do things that are good for the company and team's productivity (using that word in the broadest sense). You want all hands to spot the cracks and fix them. You probably want to create a culture where people do that.

*code = code, design, discuss code, write tickets, test etc. i.e. get the shit done on the plan

You may need to transition to making willingness and ability to do that (i.e. be an owner) a hiring criteria and performance criteria.

Re: Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?

#20

Post by axegon_ »

In my experience: ego. With few people you often have to keep things balanced and thus picking people that can work well with others. With 50, you are practically guaranteed to have at least several people that are absolutely insufferable(which can also happen in small teams in some cases - the reason why I resorted to "I quit, 1 month notice is best I can do, not 3, else I'll be doing the bare minimum for 3 months" at my old job). The truth is, more often than not, no one is willing to actively do anything about problematic people and hope that the problem will solve itself magically. Spoilers: it doesn't and it's not a question of if but when people will start quitting in swarms and usually that happens at the worst time for each company: heavy load, unreasonable deadlines, stress, etc. That's when you know the total collapse might be right around the corner.
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