A talk on what gets lost when teams scale past the point where everyone can hold the whole system in their head.
There's a size past which no single person understands the whole system anymore. A lot of what we call “engineering culture” is really just coping mechanisms for having crossed that line. This talk is about staying on the right side of it.
01 — The thresholdOne head, whole system
When two people can each hold the entire system in their heads, coordination is free, decisions are fast, and there's nowhere for confusion to hide. Every process you add past that point is buying back something you used to get for nothing.
Process is what you build to replace the understanding you lost by growing.
Sometimes growth is worth that trade. Often it isn't. The talk is a case for asking the question out loud before you scale, instead of after.
Slides available on request.