Sarah EMay 6, 2024
Dare Obasanjo

A common sign a software project is going to fail is when it has too many people working on it.

If that is unintuitive to you, consider the image below. This is why some companies are finding themselves to be more instead of less productive after layoffs.

Mar 8, 2024 at 9:40amWeb
Show threadNick LockwoodMar 8, 2024
@carnage4life this is a very good reason not to hire more people than you need but it's also an absolutely shit tier reason to fire them - if you have too many people, do more things
Show threadArnold SMar 8, 2024
@carnage4life just bring in an Agile facilitator and start tracking Velocity. Undesirable team elements will drop off automatically.
Show threadWokeratiMar 8, 2024
@carnage4life McKenzie endorses this message
Show threadwiredogMar 8, 2024

@carnage4life

That’s been known for decades. Heck, it’s right in the title of “The Mythical Man Month”

Show threadAnders EknertMar 8, 2024
@carnage4life this may be valid at the level of a team, but it’s not like you communicate with every employee in an organization. I doubt it makes a difference for communication complexity if an org has 10k employees or 5k, or does it?
Show threadMatt FranzMar 8, 2024
@anderseknert @carnage4life These red dots make me want to ask ChatGPT to combine that diagram with the Survivorship bias plane
Show threadNemo_bis 🌈Mar 9, 2024
@anderseknert If the number of direct reports per person is kept constant (a common practice), doubling the headcount will also double the size of each level in the hierarchy, so this still applies for communication lines at each level. (Unless you assume that *all* communication goes up and down the hierarchy and never horizontally. Which would be wild.)
Show threadAnders EknertMar 9, 2024
@nemobis as a developer (or whatever) working in a small team, I’m unlikely to spend more time communicating in a 10k org than I am in a 5k org… is all I’m saying. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other issues managing twice the number of people.
Show threadDaveMinorMar 8, 2024
@carnage4life It was amazing to me how many managers had never even heard of "The Mythical Man Month". When I had a team, it consisted of two people and I refused more headcount, while my peers were busy gathering as many as possible and suffocating everyone in meetings.
Show threadVirginicusMar 8, 2024
@carnage4life This is the reason hierarchy was invented. Sigh.
Show threadTobin BakerMar 8, 2024
@carnage4life also why having 3 kids is 3x harder than having 2 kids (3 possible interactions instead of 1)
Show threadGeorge ZimbragosMar 9, 2024
@carnage4life is this a problem caused by the modern desire to "flatten hierarchies? Old-fashioned systems had good communication. An army of 2 people is not stronger than an army of 200,000.
Show threadBenedict CohenMar 9, 2024
@carnage4life a solution is to have more, smaller teams and the tricky part is figuring out the boundaries to draw so teams can be autonomous. The clarity to draw those boundaries comes from leadership providing a stable vision and direction