What is the maximum (ideal) number of employees in the company?
Business Marketing with Nika
13 replies
Remember reading the book by Malcolm Gladwell – The Tipping Point.
The number stated there was: 150
150 is ideal for sustaining the group with clear communication and cohesion. It is also known as Dunbar's Number.
What do you think about this theory and what number do you consider reasonable?
Replies
Bryan McAnulty@bryanmcanulty
Heights Platform
Now that AI exists and is only improving, 150 is too many. Smaller teams will get more done with less communication overhead.
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Yepp. AQR8. Something that isn't talked about tho. is that at that point. Around 33% is already redundant, they served their purpose. Change is inevitable. Esp in todays fast pace of change.
@busmark_w_nika If your apple. Sure you can afford using excess manpower for other projects. But apple is 150k not 150. Small tech companies would go bust if they did that.
Telegram is 30 employees 😳 serving like a billion users. This the world now. What are the rest of the people up to? I dunno. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@busmark_w_nika Moderation is solved with AI. Any day now anyways. Someone needs to make a moderation SaaS. If only "building in public" on X could stop cannibalising them selfs, and build something new / useful 😅
@busmark_w_nika AI was in the stone ages back then. LLM just happened the last few years. FB / IG etc blocks everyone for doing absolutely nothing. But moderation doesn't just have to be blocking, it can be temporary blocks, like going to LI jail for a week if you send more than 100 connect request in 7 days 😸
Planyway
The "ideal" number can vary depending on the industry, the company's goals, and the level of autonomy given to teams. While 150 may be effective for traditional organizations prioritizing tight-knit teams and direct communication, some tech companies, for instance, may thrive with larger teams if they focus on flexible structures and robust digital communication tools.
150 employees is quite okay, but in my experience, 50-70 is ideal for maintaining a positive work environment and a strong sense of community among colleagues.
It all depends on the stage of the product and type of offerings. We've actually done quite a lot of research on this, and have found that companies generally need 30%-40% of the administrative staff they normally employ, and 15%-20% of management, or more likely leadership.
Bloating companies are a management issue.
@busmark_w_nika From what we see it's mostly the same in business too, albeit not as much.
Our company, Virtual Operative Services OÜ, was founded as a VA agency, so most of our work was focused on capacity support for SMB's. We mostly worked with companies 70-320 staff, and our data always came back pointing to some of the figures I've shared. Hence you find that most companies will want to permanently employ consulting teams, because they recognize a level of output unnatural in the company.
You can generally find rough figures around SMB workforce vs spend online.
These learnings are the basis for one of our products being launched on PH next week, minite On-Demand. It's a mobile, AI-powered voice assistant.
Imagine if Chat-GPT was voice only, trained on your personal and business data, personality, and character archetypes, and could only serve you. 😂😂😂
And each team member can connect on the app, use their own assistant, and share/manage projects & project statuses.
Sounds ridiculous, but that's what we've built.
Ah, the magic number 150 – because apparently, that's the most humans can handle before chaos ensues. While Dunbar's Number is fascinating, I'd say the ideal number varies by industry and company culture. Speaking of understanding what works best, "Her Ideal Match" is launching soon to help guys decode dating profiles – maybe we need a "Company's Ideal Size" next!
I would say under 150. I have worked at a tech company that quickly grew from 50 employees to over 5,000. It was wild to see a culture shift from people who really cared about producing a top notch product to people who tried to fly under the radar and doing as little work as possible. Every company is different, but I do believe when there was a smaller headcount the company was innovating more.
Launching soon!
All I can say is, less is more.