Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, Third Edition

© Michael Lopp 2016

Michael Lopp, Managing Humans, 10.1007/978-1-4842-2158-7_44

44. The Old Guard

The cultural bellwether of the company

Michael Lopp¹ 

(1)Los Gatos, California, USA

Dunbar’s Number is a favorite blunt diagnosis for the pains that affect rapidly growing teams. The number, which is somewhere between 100 and 250, describes a point at which a group of people can no longer effectively maintain social connections in their respective heads. What was simple from a communication perspective becomes costly. What was a familiar family that you saw wandering the hallway becomes Stranger Town.

It resonates. It intuitively feels right that we have a threshold for the number of relationships we can maintain in our heads. If your team or company is ...