That sounds tragic, especially since it has been well-known even since the time of Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month that small teams are often much better than large teams, and that team productivity does not scale at all linearly with team size, probably more like the log of team size, so there are major diminishing returns.
I wonder how much of this is related to status effects. I used to work in a quant finance shop that cared desperately about the way their tech team looked on paper. The credentials and degrees each hire possessed were often much more important than practical skill -- even though technical problems were hugely business critical to the firm, and it wound up that a small number of competent engineers handled the majority of important work.
But, whenever the firm was entertaining new prospective clients and they could walk them through a big cubicle bank full of fancy Ivy grads furiously typing, the status effect translated into real money for the firm's higher level management and senior executives.
I can't say they were being irrational -- I guess the burden falls to the customers being irrational in their impressions of what engineering is supposed to look like?
It was. Especially since it means they’ll be throwing €10-30m down the drain over the next few years with this strategy. I expect the CTO to be long gone before they realise that. In general, in BigCo, the more people you have under you in the org. chart, the more power you wield. It's ridiculous though.
In defence of the CEO, in most cases, more people means faster and/or better production. He was extremely capable (I was impressed, he really knew his stuff), and he knew what he wanted to achieve when it came to the company’s digital presence. With proper BigCo resources, not all that hard to achieve I think.
Second, it also probably had to do with the fact that the CTO was just unable to agree with me. It’s a family business (I’m friends with someone of the family), and if he agreed with what I said, he would’ve basically been admitting he couldn’t do the job. So in that regard he probably thought I was posing a significant risk to his continued employment. The CEO was someone of the family + a significant shareholder.
I wonder how much of this is related to status effects. I used to work in a quant finance shop that cared desperately about the way their tech team looked on paper. The credentials and degrees each hire possessed were often much more important than practical skill -- even though technical problems were hugely business critical to the firm, and it wound up that a small number of competent engineers handled the majority of important work.
But, whenever the firm was entertaining new prospective clients and they could walk them through a big cubicle bank full of fancy Ivy grads furiously typing, the status effect translated into real money for the firm's higher level management and senior executives.
I can't say they were being irrational -- I guess the burden falls to the customers being irrational in their impressions of what engineering is supposed to look like?