Every forward deployed engineer builds one-offs to win the customer in front of them — the ones who last turn those one-offs into product instead of drowning in them.
Every FDE builds one-offs; the ones who last turn them into product. Why bespoke is the right start, the 'third time productize' rule, the feedback loop to the product team, designing custom work for graduation, and managing the portfolio of one-offs.
Adding people to a growing company feels like it should straightforwardly add capacity — but it doesn't, and understanding why is one of the most important lessons in operations. Every person you add creates new communication links with everyone else, and those links grow far faster than the headcount. This is why big teams feel slower than small ones, why "adding people to a late project makes it later," and why scaling an organization is mostly a battle against communication overhead. Managing that overhead is the core challenge of scaling.
Adding people to a growing company feels like it should straightforwardly add capacity — but it doesn't. Every person you add creates new communication links with everyone else, and those grow far faster than the headcount. This is why big teams feel slower than small ones, and why scaling is mostly a battle against communication overhead.