[mumblemumble]

I would argue that Dunbar's Number is the wrong number to use for this. At least not by just naively dropping it in.

Remember, it represents the total number of stable social relationships a person can maintain. If you're looking to allow your employees to have personal lives, you'll want to leave ample room for their family and friends.

Maybe an important question to ask is, how much of your employees' social-emotional carrying capacity is it appropriate to consume? If 10%, then 15-25 is your number. If 20%, then 30-50 is your number.

[chipsa]

I would argue that there's a reason for the general size of military formations: a change of size of about half an order of magnitude per level. Much more than that for sub ordinate organizations masks it difficult to know what those orgs are actually doing. So your product team might be like 8 people. Next level up us 3-5 product teams. The 3-5 of those. And so forth. It actually scales with remarkably few levels of management. It also allows space for free form connections between people on other teams.

[pphysch]

It's definitely a big ballpark, but I think Dunbar's Number is a good place to start. If you have managers spending 10% or less of their lives on management, I don't think the organization will be very healthy. Management should be a high commitment, high compensation role.

It's also definitely a upper limit rather than lower limit. Big bureaucracies with many layers of management and small teams can work well, but no one can really individually manage 1000 subordinates.