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Comment by bsirkia | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what size exactly a "small" team is, especially if they contain "software engineers, Q.A. testers, user-experience developers and product owners." Somewhere around 25?

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Nope, usually about 6 people: 2-3 devs, 1 tester, 1 UX, 1 PO.

Oh wow. How many teams do you think are at Shutterstock? And then how many teams can one manager manage basically? (just trying to get a feel for how the "middle management" starts to come up when the organization grows).

We have about 14 teams. The topic of management is a great one. We've shifted our approach over the years. That story might make a good blog article in itself. We've ended up with what's sometimes called a "matrix" structure, where people's day-to-day activities are based on what the team is doing, but each role (dev, tester, UX) reports into a manager (who's usually not on the team) with expertise in that domain. We've mostly avoided middle managers who only manage -- nearly all our managers are also on teams and, if they're devs, code. But we've also learned that having more than five direct reports can get pretty overwhelming, and so we've had to expand our org chart as we've grown for that reason.

Ok great, I think I understand that...but a full blog post would definitely clear it up (also I've finally figured out you're obviously at Shutterstock so can just ask direct questions).

Who decides what each team is going to be working on? Do tasks come down from the C-level guys, are you self-directed on what you want to work on, etc.?

Great questions! Each team has a specific domain -- we have a customer experience team, a contributor team, a search team, etc. Each team also has one or more stakeholders -- business folks that help set the high-level direction of the team. The teams work with their stakeholders (some of whom are super hands-on, others aren't) to pick 2-3 projects per quarter to focus on. We try to talk in terms of the problems each team should solve, and let the team itself work out the best solution.

It has taken us years to refine our process, and it's been a great journey. I'm happy to chat more about it with anyone -- hit me up at dan at shutterstock.com

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