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.
