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> Typical thought leader dogma aside, using pizza as a metaphor for team size has always been silly to meaningless.

An easy way to see it fall apart is to imagine a team that each eats 3-4 slices of pizza, or a team that only eats one slice each.




Yup, in NZ a two pizza team would average out to about three people I think.

Are US pizzas giant?


We have lots of sizes of pizza. Though I think the type they mean are the sort ordered from chain places for large groups, so usually 14-16 inches (35-40cm) diameter cut into 8-12 slices.


I think it's meant to be an 'order some pizzas, everyone grabs a slice' sort of situation, not 'everyone is hungry and has a proper meal'.


Somewhere there is a company creating a committee to clarify this.


If this were true, a two-pizza team would be 12-24 people (assuming a pizza gets sliced somewhere from 6-12 slices).


Well alright everyone grabs a couple of slices, I'd say typical is 8 slices per pizza right, so that works out to 8 people, which yes is what it means doesn't it? (Not literally 8 but in that 6-10ish region?)

My point was if you interpret it to mean a full meal for hungry people a two pizza team is like 2 maybe 4 people, because 'a pizza' is an order, unless these are enormous fast food 'party size' type pizzas.


2 slices is considered to be a meal. Calorie wise, it likely is. Typical large pizza has 8 slices. The vagueness is intentional. From the Amazon concept, it is intended to replace a meal and not be a random snack. (Former amazon employee here)


Sure I'm not really getting into whether or not it's supposed to serve as your lunch and whether it's a healthy limit even if you'd like more^, etc. - I just mean it's meant with the assumption that people are having that much, not that it's your orders at a team outing to an Italian restaurant or something. (In which we agree.)

^personally I work from home and rarely eat lunch, so I have no skin in this!


Yeah there's still way to many variables.

Regional/cultural differences, appetite and body size, pizza styles, etc.

For small teams that makes for a meaningful difference between the min and max. For large teams not so much.

My wife and I have no issues finishing a 16in tavern style pizza. So that's a 4 person team. We're not even large people or big eaters. We just like pizza.


I hear you. I love that you can share a favorite food like that with your partner :)

When I worked for amzn.. I was eating approx 3500 calories a day - long bike commute. Pizza was always disappointing as rarely enough (and even then, eating my fill would be too much. I had to go out and still buy another lunch anyways* - and almost always not enough veg pizzas!). We perhaps could get into the variety of factors, yeah, eg: nutrition density to as a function of toppings.

Though.. if you look at serving size and how many people a large is meant to feed, it is pretty simply just 3 to 4.

* worse yet, because lunch was delivered, there was an expectation to work an extra hour that day (ie: working lunch meeting, and certainly do not go home early). Foing out to get enough real food and suddenly I was the bad guy for being the one team member not in office. Actually buying lunch was easier, I would just buy two at once.. Thinking back to that time, holy shit the work expectations were something else..




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