Fundamentals
AI Productivity
Exploring the paradox of declining per-person productivity as software teams scale, and why small autonomous teams consistently outperform larger ones.
LLM Written
Human Reviewed
The Paradox of Scale
As software teams grow, productivity per person paradoxically shrinks. Communication overhead scales exponentially — a team of ten has 45 possible communication channels, while a team of five has only ten.
The Cost of Coordination
Larger teams breed coordination costs: more meetings, more alignment sessions, more waiting on dependencies. Decision-making slows as consensus becomes harder to reach.
Brooks's Law
Adding people to a late project makes it later. — Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
Small, autonomous teams consistently outperform bloated ones.