The magic of small engineering teams
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The magic of small engineering teams
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Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#2> Startups ship more per person than big companies – everyone knows this
The post starts out by assuming this but I am not convinced this is true along the entire graph, if the x axis is amount of people on a team and the y axis is amount "shipped". As a company scales output, at some point in this graph the output per person from the large team should overtake the small team, otherwise why do we even have large teams in the first place? How do large teams form if not from necessity? Seems they are advocating for small one pizza teams working together in tandem at scale? Because that's essentially the way I've seen it done everywhere I've ever worked and it isn't a new idea, and what you have at the end of that is a larger unit that definitely constitutes a "department" and a "large team" even if the large team consists of several small teams. The communication overhead there can get extremely complex as well.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#3Previously
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40873471 (151 comments)
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#4I find Posthog interesting because it launched around the same time (2020ish) as Stan.Store.
Not Posthog is a technically much more challenging product and is more geared towards developers and yet in terms of ARR it is at 10 million whereas Stan.Store which is basically link in bio + a very basic store is doing 25 million ARR.
Goes to show, selling to developers is really hard. Hopefully Posthog makes it in the long term, but graphing time spent vs returns, something like Stan.Store will make the founder + investors a lot more money in a shorter time period.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#5> Startups ship more per person than big companies – everyone knows this The post starts out by assuming this but I am not convinced this is true along the entire graph, if the x axis is amount of people on a team and the y axis is amount "shipped". As a company scales output, at some point in this graph the output per person from the large team should overtake the small team, otherwise why do we even have large team…
Large companies vs. large teams is not the same.
> How do large teams form if not from necessity?
Not sure if there's some Parkinson or Murphy's law, but every manager complains about too little headcount. Also count of people reporting to you (directly or indirectly) is one of the measures of success for managers.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#6> Startups ship more per person than big companies – everyone knows this The post starts out by assuming this but I am not convinced this is true along the entire graph, if the x axis is amount of people on a team and the y axis is amount "shipped". As a company scales output, at some point in this graph the output per person from the large team should overtake the small team, otherwise why do we even have large team…
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Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#7> Startups ship more per person than big companies – everyone knows this The post starts out by assuming this but I am not convinced this is true along the entire graph, if the x axis is amount of people on a team and the y axis is amount "shipped". As a company scales output, at some point in this graph the output per person from the large team should overtake the small team, otherwise why do we even have large team…
Large teams are a non-monetary bonus/incentive for the managerial class. At a manager's prospective employer they'll be asked for and judged by their headcount, much like engineers are asked for their previous salary.
Large teams don't cause success. They require success to sustain their bloat.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#8> Startups ship more per person than big companies – everyone knows this The post starts out by assuming this but I am not convinced this is true along the entire graph, if the x axis is amount of people on a team and the y axis is amount "shipped". As a company scales output, at some point in this graph the output per person from the large team should overtake the small team, otherwise why do we even have large team…
Large companies vs. large teams is not the same. > How do large teams form if not from necessity? Not sure if there's some Parkinson or Murphy's law, but every manager complains about too little headcount. Also count of people reporting to you (directly or indirectly) is one of the measures of success for managers.
> Large companies vs. large teams is not the same.
sure, but isn’t this OP making a direct comparison?
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#9There's a danger as well. Small teams become very tribal, and once they're trapped down a rabbit hole of bad abstractions and local maxima, can be very hard to coax out of.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#10> Startups ship more per person than big companies – everyone knows this The post starts out by assuming this but I am not convinced this is true along the entire graph, if the x axis is amount of people on a team and the y axis is amount "shipped". As a company scales output, at some point in this graph the output per person from the large team should overtake the small team, otherwise why do we even have large team…
Companies increase team size because they want to increase overall output, not per-person output. Even if 20 people produce half as much per person as 5 people, they’re still getting twice as much done.
(The other answers take a cynical “managers suck!” stance, which isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s not the main reason. Companies mainly add people because they want more output, simple as that.)