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by ryandrake
1311 days ago
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> What could they possibly be doing? People constantly underestimate the size of the support staff needed to keep the engineering team productive. For every ten or so software engineers you hire to work on a new product or feature, you're going to need 5-10 QA engineers, another project manager, another product manager, maybe another build engineer, maybe more internal IT staff... You need these people. Software doesn't just leap from developers' fingertips directly onto store shelves. And now that that program's engineering manager has so many more direct reports, that manager needs another manager to split his duties up... And now that there are so many managers, their Director maybe needs a personal assistant to help keep her schedule better organized. All that extra staff eventually requires more HR support, more people working in facilities/building management, more janitors. On the business side, this product is going to need a few more marketers, maybe salespeople to sell it, business analysts to track its effectiveness, and so on. After a couple rounds of this, the company looks up and somehow has 3,000 people and HN sneers about what could they all be doing... |
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I agree with your general point that a "software team" in a big org requires a lot more people than just engineers developing new features, and that the headcount doesn't necessarily scale linearly. That doesn't change the fact that in a normal business, if 3,000 full-time staff (support staff and all) are working on something, it's probably something pretty big that generates enough revenue or has enough growth potential to justify that cost. Even if a team is working hard and "doing stuff", they can still be grossly overstaffed.