If you're on a team of 10 people, 3 of those people will be doing about half the work. And then 7 are doing the other half. If there are 10 work units, the 3 are doing 5/3 of a work unit each and the 7 are doing 5/7 of a work unit each for a ratio of 2.3x
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Yes, 1/10th developers are common - especially in larger teams. And there are also -1/2 developers too where someone will spend half their time just cleaning up after the -1/2 developer.
And just with the nature of teams, larger teams are going to have a significant fraction of the team doing very little work (note: this applies to consultancy teams too and if you get a team of 20 people to work on the project, you really should just get a team of 4 and stay on top of them as it will be less work to manage).
https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/
> Price’s law says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.
Price's square root law: Empirical validity and relation to Lotka's law https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/030645... (behind various paywalls)
If you're on a team of 10 people, 3 of those people will be doing about half the work. And then 7 are doing the other half. If there are 10 work units, the 3 are doing 5/3 of a work unit each and the 7 are doing 5/7 of a work unit each for a ratio of 2.3x
---
Yes, 1/10th developers are common - especially in larger teams. And there are also -1/2 developers too where someone will spend half their time just cleaning up after the -1/2 developer.
And just with the nature of teams, larger teams are going to have a significant fraction of the team doing very little work (note: this applies to consultancy teams too and if you get a team of 20 people to work on the project, you really should just get a team of 4 and stay on top of them as it will be less work to manage).