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I look around Amazon and see some ridiculously big teams for features that I could imagine a startup with a hundred people building. I worked at a startup with a hundred people: we did a lot! We really did. But then you look at some org doing something similar to the startup and see thousands of people are there and they are all complaining about the ops burden and such. Well, is it just designed stupid? Promo project after promo project adding layers and layers? Somebody got promoted for making a single pizza team "monolithic service" (that worked) into a whole flow of a dozen "micro services". Managers looking for their own promo then splitting their teams? Then those teams just kept committing more and more code, adding a bunch of optimization and caching or a bunch of science projects their interns did, or whatever, and now all those services are just as complex as the original monolithic service (that worked)? My point is that big bloated orgs creates massive arrays of services that do actually need a big number of people to support--even though it's not doing much more than the original version I am thinking about Twitter having 8500 and Meta having 87000 not to mention Alexa org in Amazon with what, 20k? Something stupid like that? Those zillions of teams created software that needs them to support it, even if it doesn't do much. So I wonder if getting big is a one way door.
Are you sure you understand the full problem the team is solving? Everything is trivial if you ignore the requirements...
Yeah, but are they adding more and more requirements long after the original problem was solved?
This is an innovation S curve. When this happens, growth slows and companies go in search of other value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
Well put @op. Exactly my thoughts.
I think this is absolutely correct. It’s just entropy. Systems tend to get more complex on their own without intervention. It takes sustained effort to fight against that complexity and keep it from blowing out of control in a self-perpetuating loop. It’s possible to fight this if you have highly skilled technical people (PEs, usually) that can set strategy for an entire org and have the depth/breadth to know when things are going the wrong way. Unfortunately this is a one way door like you said — once the system is too complex for even one person to understand (if only at a very high level), you’re toast.
Yep. Software engineer salaries should be 15x the average fang salary, and headcut should be 15x less. In other words cull everyone who is not a 10x dev or greater.
Corporations are supposed to expand when their profits are high and taxes are lower. It’s literally built into the stock value price of a company, growth and the primary goal of the CEO. When the economy tanks sue to various reasons not including printing money, COVID, higher tax rates that results in less investment into companies and into safer things like bonds, there’s less jobs and consumer spending and inflation if money is printed without a real product behind it. This means new product lines will likely tank and a snow ball effect happens until some global positive event can turn the economy around.
A company like Disney has a lot of bloat but it comes with the territory for a big business. When I was at a startup, we didn't have to worry about accessibility reviews on sites or legal review. We just weren't on anyone's radar for lawsuits or bad press the way Disney would be. I can come up with dozens of examples of Disney needing extra layers of bloat that a startup wouldn't need.
This is why you see orgs getting impacted more than teams It’s hard to cut entire teams for the reasons you’re saying, but it’s easy to just say “this whole product is dead”