# How a startup loses its spark

Article: <https://blog.johnqian.com/startup-spark>

## Notes

- Article touches on the topic of scaling engineering organization from 10 to 100.
- Not trying to introduce any clever trick to fight the inherent properties of scale:
  - More specialization.
  - Less impact.
  - Less awareness.
  - Higher communication overhead.
  - Lower risk tolerance.
- The advice is not accelerate the effects of scale:
  - Don't introduce heavy-weight project management tools (hello, Jira).
    Approach scaling issues from the first principles instead of copying old method popular among big enterprises.
  - Keep each team small and independent. Citing Rippling as an example.
    Also noting, that this approach doesn't work in practice due to high coupling between components of a product.
  - The best incentive is to give engineers fat chunk of equity and the power to influence company's value.
- But the actual solution is to stay small. Maybe with assist from AI.

## Conclusion

- When inspecting the issues of scale from the perspective of "fun", author runs to about the same conclusions as Brooks in Mythical Man-Month. But Brooks didn't have ChatGPT.