Small team, senior people: why we stay small
Most agencies grow by adding layers. We have chosen not to, and here is what that means for the people we work with.
There is a familiar shape to growing a software agency: more projects, more juniors, more account managers to keep the projects and juniors coordinated. Each layer makes sense on its own. Together they put distance between the client and the work.
What staying small changes
- Direct lines: the person you talk to is the person making the decision in the code or the design.
- Fewer handovers: every handover loses some context, and context is most of what makes software right.
- Honest capacity: we start projects when we can give them attention, rather than when the contract is signed.
“The fastest way to build the wrong thing is to explain it through three people.”
Our own products keep us honest
Running our own apps means we live with the consequences of every decision: the support emails, the release that broke something, the feature nobody used. That experience is the main thing we bring to client work, and it doesn't survive being passed down a chain.
Staying small is a choice with a cost: we say no to some work. We think the work we say yes to is better for it.
Written by the team at Bytelights, a product and AI studio in India.