<i>500 - the number of employees before your CEO becomes a political figure</i><p><i>1000 - the size of company when you’re at risk of losing accountability</i><p>From my own experience and other sources (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35206141" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35206141</a>) those numbers seem too high. I've seen this happen 2 times in front of my eyes while both companies were in the 100-200 range.<p>One of them managed to go to the next level and adapt to the new reality the other is still struggling.
These numbers are probably the least valuable numbers you will see on Hacker News today. Almost every one is an exception to an anecdote, and an anecdote with exceptions.<p>Things like "90 - the number of days a role should stay open
90 days is the industry standard time-to-hire metric."<p>So is 90 days the average in this industry? Do you want to be average? Is it really your goal to do things they same way all of your competitors do? A role should stay open EXACTLY as long as it needs to. Putting artificial numbers in front of it and acting like there is some magic 'best practice' is ridiculous. There may be some jobs that take longer, and some that take much much less. The last thing you need to do is sit around answering questions like "Why is this taking longer than the industry standard?".<p>If you really need to manage by following a list of 'numbers' you are a fantastic illustration of why there can be so much differentiation among companies. Great companies can build great successes on the back of thoughtless process.
40 - The number of hours per week that you should "expect" people to work.<p>You can <i>hope</i> or <i>inspire</i> or <i>ask</i> for more. But don't expect it. And don't take it for granted.
On a tangential note I've also asked here (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35245329" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35245329</a>) what will be some performance indicators to take into consideration when delivering software. That '50 PRs in 6 months' is interesting. You might argue that "it's important to deliver business value" and "as long as your hitting your market/business capabilities targets" everyone is happy. But my question is still: "how do you know you are being efficient? can you still deliver with half the number of people?".