1.5 engineers?
The Google Video team was very small.
If anything, shows that they were not that committed to even put a resource dedicated to that project
So yes there's a cost involved and is never a clear cut especially if you run projects in parallel.
Going back to your original post:
> Yes but doesn't work that way, with context switching cost and all of the rest people who are 50% in one projects are not really that effective.
Again, person dependent but missing the point. Would have it been more accurate to say they have 1.4327 engineers on the project? Probably. Is that helpful when everyone understands what 1.5 actually means? Not really. And two projects is not so unreasonable depending on the situation.
> If anything, shows that they were not that committed to even put a resource dedicated to that project
100% yes to that. And as we have learned since this comment thread, it was not a 50% time situation but actually someone wearing two hats (PM and engineer): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28426523
You're reading too far, this is not the point of my comment?
As you mentioned on the part below I was highlighting that they didn't want to put dedicated resource on the projects. The rest is just your own imagination ramping up to assume that I meant something else.
And yes, we didn't know before that was one engineer doing also PM work. But so said, would've been more effective to have an engineer doing the work and a PM on two projects. Is easier to switch between managing stuff than engineering stuff.
I mean it was a direct claim in your comment I was responding to, literally quoted which is the claim that someone on two project is "not really that effective". I'm simply offering my experiences that don't always match that. That's not my imagination there.
No one here was arguing about that they clearly did not resource it in a meaningful way (I said as much in my post), that's not what this thread is discussing though...