Same thing as a Commando of few soldiers can accomplish focused tasks very effectively.<p>But you still need an army to hold ground. Guerilla tactics only get you that far.<p>Same in business, you can have very focused teams when you are a startup, aiming to disrupt. When you start to be the one in the place, you'll focus will change.<p>Exactly the same analogy of why political leaders don't leverage the same agenda/people when they rise to power amd whem they are.<p><a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs">https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs</a> which takes ideas from the book "The Dictator's Handbook<p>I guess that also explains enshitification...
If you have 1-2 engineers, then you have to build a product with a ruthlessly focused scope. Hopefully you do it well. If you have 20 engineers, then you have each one add new surface area each quarter, and then your app is 160 different things after a couple years. It's too bloated for anyone to like and it was too expensive to build to throw away. Sometimes it really needs to be that complicated, but I'm not sure adding 20% more engineering headcount indefinitely is sustainable for most businesses.