Yet... the economics of software is such that software companies balloon in size.
Software companies/teams/applications of today are many time larger than in 1975. It may be more efficient to have software that's federated and developed by small teams but... Facebook's revenue is $90bn. A social network 10% FB's "size" will make much less than $9bn in ad revenues^.
That means that product teams grow until the point Fred Brooks warned about play out... until the marginal team members' contribution is negative.
^For example, Reddit has 10%-20% facebook's users, but only about 2% of its revenue.
Software companies/teams/applications of today are many time larger than in 1975. It may be more efficient to have software that's federated and developed by small teams but... Facebook's revenue is $90bn. A social network 10% FB's "size" will make much less than $9bn in ad revenues^.
That means that product teams grow until the point Fred Brooks warned about play out... until the marginal team members' contribution is negative.
^For example, Reddit has 10%-20% facebook's users, but only about 2% of its revenue.