[torginus]

My experience is that once success comes, business decides to quickly scale up the company - tons of people are hired, with most of the not having any experience with the hoot (or indeed give a hoot). Rigid management structures are created, inhabited by social climbers. A lot of the original devs leave etc.

That's the point when a ton of disinterested, inexperienced, and less handpicked people start pushing code in - driven not by the need to build good software, but to close jira tickets.

This invariably results in stagnating productivity at best, and upper management wondering why they are often not delivering on the pre-expansion level, let alone one that would be expected of 3x the headcount.