Managers should support 6-8 engineers. ​ Tech Lead Managers (TLMs). Managers supporting less than four engineers tend to function as TLMs, taking on a share of design and implementation work. For some folks this role can uniquely leverage their strengths, but it's a role with limited career opportunities. To progress as a manager, they'll want more time to focus developing their management skills. Alternatively to progress towards staff engineering roles, they'll find it difficult to spend enough time in the technical details. ​ Most folks find being oncall for components they're unfamiliar with to be disproportionately stressful. ​ An important property of teams is that they abstract the complexities of the individuals that compose them. ​ and avoid creating a two-tiered class system of innovators and maintainers.

Of the early Stripe lore I’ve encountered, my favorite is that it managed to accomplish a tremendous amount with a small team because folks moved so rapidly from one project to another project that, leaving an afterimage behind them, it appeared that they were everywhere simultaneously.

The core observations from Fred Brook’s The Mythical Man Month is that assigning more folks to work on a project often slows down delivery. Part of that is the predictability tax.