Budgeting for startup
Out of context: Reply #2
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- monNom1
I think the full time equivalent thing doesn’t really get you a very accurate picture. In small groups, say 5 people, all senior, all working on their own portion of the project, you can get away without a management layer, or excessive meetings. As you add people, and especially junior staff that need direction, guidance, training, you need also to add managers that do not contribute productive hours but keep the producers producing. You also need more meetings. More documentation, more rigidity. Doing a project in half the time doesn’t require a doubling of bodies. It’s more like exponentially more people.
There’s an interesting book called “the mythical man month” that talks about this dynamic in software development.
That said, I think you likely need to hire just one person to begin with (maybe only as a consultant): you need a very senior dev lead that has done this sort of thing previously, and knows the roles, the technologies, and the resources required to accomplish the task. They can (hopefully) tell you how long and at what cost, and let you know the trade-offs between features, scalability, and timelines. Be prepared to also find that this person is full of shit. Everyone pads their resume. Some more than others. Hopefully you can find a good resource and get to the next level without too much reworking.
Good luck!