[btilly]

Attempts I've seen to quantify it have found that you hit a productivity peak in a team of 5-8 people. Then you need to add processes to avoid n^2 communication overhead. You don't get back to the same productivity until you have a team of 20-25 people.

If you've never worked on a small team, the productivity difference from staying small may not sink in. But they are real and large. And companies should not lightly cross that threshold.

I agree with you that, on a large team and in a large organization, terseness and dynamic typing are bad. But I don't agree that verbosity is not a problem. It absolutely is. It makes you have to go to large teams sooner.