Sometimes it's more! You have nine projects you want to do. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. You have 2 developers. You hire 3 more. One of the new hires has more familiarity with what projects E and G needs than anyone on the existing team had. One of them is slower than the average of the existing devs. One of them is MUCH faster. The five of them complete those nine projects in three months (15 total people months, with boosts from one of the new dev's skills and the other's increased speed) when it may have taken 9 otherwise (18 total people months).
But I've seen a lot of companies not be quite that smart in their hiring...
(The faster scenario I've outlined above also potentially bites you in the butt if you don't have enough more valuable projects lined up behind that first set...)
This was the relevant part of what you replied to:
> It doesn't certainly doesn't mean anything as broad as "a company cannot do more things by increasing its employee count."
And yes, managers do expect close to linear productivity gain past that spot. Managers, that are a little smarter, start thinking about how spotify did squad (without actually knowing anything about it).
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2022/10/21/coming-terms-t...
I think a well composed small team can have greater than linear improvement in effectiveness because of skill stretch and decreasing blindspots.
