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Comment by gr3ml1n | Hacker News Reader

I've definitely seen the same at other big companies.

I've wondered where the line is; what's the point at which the company grows too much and regresses to this sort of mess of needing to get bureaucratic consensus? Purely experientially, it seems to be at around the 40-50 people person mark.

I used to think it was an active founder/CEO that couldn't direct things anymore, but that happens at maybe 20-30 people, so that's not it.

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What is the point where the company is eyed as stable for retirement goals? That’s where the subjective interests override the companies objectives and the growth of the company changes towards preservative rather than dangerous; wherein capital risk intrinsically is.

When you say 40-50 people, are we talking 40-50 employees, or 40-50 "director" level positions? Because 40-50 employees seems incredibly low for reaching bureaucratic mess levels. In my area, there're plenty of small-medium companies with 50-100+ employees that are essentially founder ran with maybe a few higher level leadership under them.

I'd even say if you're reaching bureaucratic mess at such low employee count, then it's strictly a company issue of adding too much management and too many silos so early.

40-50 total.

I agree it seems low, but for my sample size of ~3 companies it’s held.

i've worked at a 30-50 person company that was (is?) super inefficient. at some point there were more directors, managers and product people than actual engineers doing the work. i remember specifically that at one point there was a team of 4 people with 1 engineer and 3 different "stakeholders"!

Probably the product people would argue that these stakeholders need to be better product-managed, while you seem to be thinking it needs more engineers... and now we're off to the races...

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