The Engineering Leader

Scaling Teams

In previous years, we experienced boom times of zero interest rates and unicorn (greater than $1 billion) valuations based on user numbers rather than revenue.¹ Back then, the number of people employed at a company was a vanity metric; growth numbers mattered more than business fundamentals, and organizations often used to “scale teams” by adding more and more people to them. Then, much later, they’d only intervene when things started to break down. Managers would be hired, objectives and key results (OKRs) would be introduced, and leveling systems would be rolled out. There would be attrition, but eventually some semblance of order would usually be reached—at least until the market shifted, questions about productivity ensued, and a layoff was announced.

This approach to scaling was always pretty wasteful. Adding a lot of people very quickly usually meant that hiring was not well thought through, meaning there would need to be more performance management (HR would typically also be unprepared for this, either because of hiring in late or focusing on culture), and onboarding would be chaotic and inconsistent, making it difficult to know where to attribute problems or how to address them. If diversity, equity, and inclusion was a priority, the DEI numbers might improve, but if it wasn’t, a small homogenous team would grow to be a large homogeneous team, and that problem would become even more intractable.

People management is a key part of the strategy for scaling ...