Scaling
What breaks at every size, and what to fix first.
A stage-by-stage field guide from five engineers to a few hundred, including the failure modes that arrive right on schedule.
What breaks at every size
Org failures arrive on a schedule. Knowing which one is next turns a crisis into a maintenance task you did early.
0-5 · 5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
From twenty to fifty
You stop knowing everything and start managing through others. The thing that degrades first isn't quality or communication, it's decision speed.
20-50
Hiring plans and budget, in the CFO's language
A headcount request is a bet about next year's output. Argue it bottom-up from outcomes and unit costs, in the CFO's language, never as a number you need.
20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
Process debt
Process accumulates like code and gets removed far less often. Every rule should name the failure it prevents and when that failure last happened, or it goes.
20-50 · 50-150 · 150+