It actually looks more like an exponential curve with 50% of the area under the curve fitting in the last few devs. If we normalized the "flat" side of the curve to be a 1x dev, the we probably have 80 1x devs, 5 2-3x devs, 5 4-6x devs and 10 8-9x devs.
Rather than quadratic scaling, we're dealing with scaling by root. This actually meshes very well with the "mythical man month"
If we almost double from 100 devs to 196 devs, we only go from 10 to 14 devs doing half the work.
We've already accepted that 10 devs were doing half the work of 100 devs. We've also accepted that those devs must be giving it their all. So, doubling the devs, but only getting 4 new people to fill the doubled top 50%. Either we have some new 20x devs or the actual amount of work hasn't increased at the same rate.
I would still say that is probably incorrect though. The "mythic man month" doesn't apply to total work done -- only to total useful work done. As the social complexities increase, the ratio of other work decreases, but the those top developers will still have to carry both increases (to at least some degree) in order to still be doing half the work.
I suspect that as the social overhead increases, you should see three interesting cases. Those who can deal with the social overhead more quickly, so they have more real work time to compensate for being slower at it (potentially bumping a 5x dev with better social strategies higher). You could see the opposite where a 10x dev simply loses all their time in meetings. You could also see where a 1x dev with better social strategies handles most of a 10x devs social workload so that dev can instead focus on coding (it's rare, but I've worked on teams with 1-2 devs who did little except keep the team productive by fending off the bureaucracy).
Rather than quadratic scaling, we're dealing with scaling by root. This actually meshes very well with the "mythical man month"
If we almost double from 100 devs to 196 devs, we only go from 10 to 14 devs doing half the work.
We've already accepted that 10 devs were doing half the work of 100 devs. We've also accepted that those devs must be giving it their all. So, doubling the devs, but only getting 4 new people to fill the doubled top 50%. Either we have some new 20x devs or the actual amount of work hasn't increased at the same rate.
I would still say that is probably incorrect though. The "mythic man month" doesn't apply to total work done -- only to total useful work done. As the social complexities increase, the ratio of other work decreases, but the those top developers will still have to carry both increases (to at least some degree) in order to still be doing half the work.
I suspect that as the social overhead increases, you should see three interesting cases. Those who can deal with the social overhead more quickly, so they have more real work time to compensate for being slower at it (potentially bumping a 5x dev with better social strategies higher). You could see the opposite where a 10x dev simply loses all their time in meetings. You could also see where a 1x dev with better social strategies handles most of a 10x devs social workload so that dev can instead focus on coding (it's rare, but I've worked on teams with 1-2 devs who did little except keep the team productive by fending off the bureaucracy).