Behind the Firewall: Notes of a Punk CIO

No matter how shiny your tools, how agile your methodology, or how clever your strategy — if your team pyramid is broken, your operating model is unsustainable. It’s the quiet killer of productivity, culture, and cost-efficiency.

The balancing act: scope vs. team shape

Your team pyramid should always be in sync with (at least) two things:

• Service catalogue complexity
• Volume of work

If you scale headcount or seniority without a matching increase in business value or complexity, you’re building a beautiful disaster.

What Happens If You Don’t Manage It?

Let’s keep it painfully simple. Say you start with a well-structured team:

• 1 Lead (60k EUR)
• 2 Seniors (45k EUR each)
• 4 Mids (35k EUR each)
• 3 Juniors (20k EUR each)
  Total cost: 365k EUR/year

Now fast-forward 2 years of standard promotions and salary increases — but with the same service catalogue and work volume. Your team now looks like:

• 1 Lead (65k EUR)
• 3 Seniors (50k EUR each)
• 3 Mids (40k EUR each)
• 3 Juniors (25k EUR each)
  Total cost: 455k EUR/year

That’s +25% cost — for no additional value or complexity.

And worse? Your seniors are bored, juniors are blocked, and the team is doing the same things… just more expensively and less happily.

Smart levers to manage the pyramid

You can’t brute-force this. You need finesse. Here are 5 strategic moves:

1. Backfill smartly.
   Use attrition as a design opportunity. Refill with the right level or don’t refill at all.
2. Maintain a rolling talent pipeline.
   Interns, trainees, job rotations — these are low-risk, high-value feeders that keep your base fresh.
3. Redesign the scope, not just the roles.
   If a team’s senior-heavy, shift more complex work their way. Don’t let seniors rot doing L1 ops.
4. Create exit paths for growth.
   Not everyone should stay in the same team forever. Promote horizontally — into product, architecture, BRM — and reshape the base. Let people go and grow elsewhere – difficult, but part of life.
5. Use data, not gut, to rebalance.
   Track team maturity, work type, cost per ticket/project, and internal NPS. Let facts guide structure.

But don’t forget: These are humans, not FTEs on a slide

Yes, we’re building lean, high-impact orgs. But motivation matters. Culture matters.
People need purpose, challenge, learning, and growth. A rigid, over-optimized pyramid kills that just as fast as a bloated one.

The best teams?

• High-performing core
• Energized base
• Trusted exits
• Intentional design