My favorite size of engineering team is 1
The magic of small engineering teams
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#22> 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.)
Yeah. Increases in team size typically mean an increase in specialization and a decrease in productivity because of the larger amount of communication that must be done to keep everyone moving in the same direction.
I was responsible for a lot more at a small company, and I only had to convince one other person if I wanted to do something within my corner. At a large company, I may have to convince representatives from teams representing > 100 people.
That takes time.
But as an organization, we can solve problems that weren't possible to solve at the small company due to lack of resources and lack of people who could sit heads down and work on a problem for 6 months due to their other responsibilities.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#23Hmm.. 47 people, 15 teams - indicates 3 to a team. Yet the image has 6 gophers.
15 teams means 15 first-line managers, 5 second-line managers, 2 directors, and 1 VP (I am assuming the manager teams have the same rule of 3/team). In total 23 managers for 47 people.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#24Previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40873471 (151 comments)
So it’s not me having deja-vu, yes this was posted a couple of days ago.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#25>>> We prefer goals orientated around what teams will ship, rather than more abstract goals like "increase conversions by 10%".
This is … interesting. I can hear every scrum master course leader crying but I like it.
On the other hand, measuring impact in the real world is a vital task - but yeah it’s a lot easier to say “Inwill build a car” than “I will drive the user to a football game once I have built a car”
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#26Hmm.. 47 people, 15 teams - indicates 3 to a team. Yet the image has 6 gophers.
15 teams means 15 first-line managers, 5 second-line managers, 2 directors, and 1 VP (I am assuming the manager teams have the same rule of 3/team). In total 23 managers for 47 people.
Sadly, I have seen organizations follow this rule. And wind up with more "managers" than actual ICs. It's insane.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#27> 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…
From what I've seen, total output (usually) continues increasing, but at a certain point, the curse of scale is bureaucracy.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#28>>> We prefer goals orientated around what teams will ship, rather than more abstract goals like "increase conversions by 10%". This is … interesting. I can hear every scrum master course leader crying but I like it. On the other hand, measuring impact in the real world is a vital task - but yeah it’s a lot easier to say “Inwill build a car” than “I will drive the user to a football game once I have built a car”
Yeah, that line seemed super weird to me too.
Obviously "improve X metric" is not a plan, but without any key results to evaluate against, it's easy for things to be "done" poorly or to not be targeted at something that matters, particularly as orgs get larger.
They do say that teams have long term objectives and metrics, so maybe those are what is used for evaluation, but it definitely feels weird.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#29Hmm.. 47 people, 15 teams - indicates 3 to a team. Yet the image has 6 gophers.
15 teams means 15 first-line managers, 5 second-line managers, 2 directors, and 1 VP (I am assuming the manager teams have the same rule of 3/team). In total 23 managers for 47 people.
Do they actually have 15 dedicated first line managers? For a team of 3 people you can definitely get away with a TL who spends most of their time coding.
Re: The magic of small engineering teams
#30> 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.
In 2020, I interviewed at Google. One of the screening questions was my current team size. I had no idea (but had a system where I could look it up). I was under by a little more than a factor of 2, because I don’t care about my team size as a vanity metric, but I can confirm that recruiters are very interested in it.