Humans were not made to work in groups of a 1000

I read an interesting essay by Paul Graham today, You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss. Paul theorizes that humans are meant to work in groups of 8-20. So when you put more than that in an organization, you start to lose freedom in order to keep organization.

A group of 10 managers is not merely a group of 10 people working together in the usual way.  It's really a group of groups.  Which means for a group of 10 managers to work together as if they were simply a group of 10 individuals, the group working for each manager would have to work as if they were a single person—the workers and manager would each share only one person's worth of freedom between them.

He then goes on to explain that working for a large organization is like eating junk food.

The average MIT graduate wants to work at Google or Microsoft, because it's a recognized brand, it's safe, and they'll get paid a good salary right away.  It's the job equivalent of the pizza they had for lunch.  The drawbacks will only become apparent later, and then only in a vague sense of malaise.

Anyone who has watched a big company struggle to make a decision, or been part of that struggle!, will find themselves nodding at some point. Something to think about.