Work Is Work | codahale.com (Jan. 2020)
The Ceiling Is Low
The work capacity of an organization scales, at most, linearly as new members are added. … The ceaseless pursuit of force multipliers is the only possible route to superlinear productivity improvements as an organization grows.
The Floor Is Lava
Contention costs grow superlinearly as new members are added. … Staffing highly sequential efforts as if they were entirely parallel leads to catastrophe.
Hell Is Other People
Coherence costs grow quadratically as new members are added. … the total time spent communicating will grow quadratically as the work capacity of the organization grows linearly.
Principles From Beyond Space And Time
Keep the work parallel, the groups small, and the resources local
Prioritize the development of force multipliers
If possible, factor work products into independent modules; if not, grow slowly and optimize
Scale organizational efforts across a portfolio of synergistic products
Keep responsibility assignment matrices small, sparse, and local
Prioritize asynchronous information distribution over synchronous
What happens inside the boundaries is important