notes-business-idealSizeOfACorporation

i haven't worked in any mid-size corporations so i don't really know. but, trying to imagine how many people i bet could be collegial, and trying to fit that into a formula using Dunbar's number (150), i'm guessing about 75 (Dunbar/2).

since that is a maximum limit, you want to have a target less than that so that there is some room for error. So how about 50.

on this approach, 180 definitely seems like too many people to me.

but now what if you want something more hierarchical. Here's a bottom-up calculation. Starting with 'two-pizza teams' of 7 people (instead of 'two pizza team', you could justify this number by appealing to the desire to have a small 'span of control' for team managers), you then have about 150 (Dunbar) such teams per 'suborganization'; and about 7 departments per division and 10 divisions. This gives you 7*150*7*10 = 73500, close to the number of employees at Apple in 2013 (80,000 according to Wikipedia).