If you can’t feed a team with two pizza’s it’s too large – Jeff Bezos
An interesting statement from Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of one of the largest for profit organisations. Amazon employs more than 1.6 million employees. For the CEO of such a huge organisation to say “If you can’t feed a team with two pizza’s it’s too large” it must mean something.
I have never been involved in leading a big team, thus i will not have my personal input on this statement.
If you can’t feed a team with two pizza’s it’s too large
– Jeff Bezos
As i said previously, i have never been a part of a big team, thus i can not give opinion based on experience, however, let’s try to analyse Jeff Bezos’ quote.
1- How many people do 2 large pizza’s feed ? Let’s do the math (Dominos Pizza and Pizza Hut sizes):
- A Large 14″ inch Pizza is normally cut into 8 or 10 slices and serves 3-5 people
- An Extra Large 16″ inch Pizza is normally cut into 6 or 12 slices and serves 5-6 people
- An 18″ inch Pizza is normally cut into 6 or 12 slices and serves 6-7 people
Thus assuming that Jeff is not as precise in his pizza terminology, we can assume 2 large pizza’s can feed between 6 to 14 people.
2- What level of feeding are we talking about ?
Are we talking about just taking a couple slices to calm your hunger, or we are talking about having a proper portion of food?
I imagine we should take the middle ground.
Based on the 2 above points, we can assume that Jeff meant a team should be between 6 and 10 people.
Why teams should be kept small ? That’s a good question that we will try to explore another time.
