Theses are really common questions to ask and we already know the responses.
But are you asking the right questions?
Your hypothesis is that anybody suffiently trained is enough and it is easy to scale by having more people.
This work well for contracting companies that effectivelly sell people and not really care about the software. Their model is totally scalable: they revenue is mostly dependant of the number of people billed. And too much productivy is more a nuisance. They just need not to be worse than other contracting companies. So do the same as everybody else, be sure to have low operationnal costs and you are fine.
But from the software side, this is the opposite. Software don't scale. The bigger the code base, the more it cost to maintain. Too many people working on it and too much turnover and your team start to spend more time in meetings, politics or helping newcomers than getting things done.
As a manager, while this is far more satisfactory to manage bigger teams, your role is to empower your team so it can do more with less. And any tool that can give you an edge is a huge asset. If a better programming language mean more productivity, use it. If a better SCM can help, use it! If faster computer ensure that your devs stay in the zone, buy them.
That the point here. You can do more with a good team of 10 people than with an average team of 50 people (where 10 peoples will be consumed just to manage others).
But are you asking the right questions?
Your hypothesis is that anybody suffiently trained is enough and it is easy to scale by having more people.
This work well for contracting companies that effectivelly sell people and not really care about the software. Their model is totally scalable: they revenue is mostly dependant of the number of people billed. And too much productivy is more a nuisance. They just need not to be worse than other contracting companies. So do the same as everybody else, be sure to have low operationnal costs and you are fine.
But from the software side, this is the opposite. Software don't scale. The bigger the code base, the more it cost to maintain. Too many people working on it and too much turnover and your team start to spend more time in meetings, politics or helping newcomers than getting things done.
As a manager, while this is far more satisfactory to manage bigger teams, your role is to empower your team so it can do more with less. And any tool that can give you an edge is a huge asset. If a better programming language mean more productivity, use it. If a better SCM can help, use it! If faster computer ensure that your devs stay in the zone, buy them.
That the point here. You can do more with a good team of 10 people than with an average team of 50 people (where 10 peoples will be consumed just to manage others).