Scaling Engineering Culture: From 5 to 50 Developers

The Two-Pizza Rule Is Not a Strategy

When you're a team of five, communication is effortless. Everyone knows everything. Decisions happen organically. But once you cross 15–20 engineers, that breaks—fast.

What slows teams down is rarely lack of talent. It's unclear ownership and undocumented decisions.

Three Pillars of Scalable Culture

1. Written Decisions (ADRs): If a decision matters, write it down. Architecture debates should not restart every six months.
2. Automation Over Policing: CI/CD, linters, and tests should enforce standards—not humans in code reviews.
3. Psychological Safety: Teams that fear failure stop innovating. Blameless post-mortems are non-negotiable.

"If the team needs you to make every decision, you are the bottleneck."

Leadership is about designing systems that work without you in the room.