You're Asking The Wrong Questions When You're Building That Engineering Team

A few months ago, I was on a call with a Head of Data at a major financial services firm. She walked me through her roadmap. She needed a data cleanup and a new risk model. Her board had also requested a dashboard backlog. 

When she finished, she took a breath and asked the question every engineering or data leader eventually asks: “So … how many engineers do you think we need to make all this happen?”

It’s a totally natural question. And it’s also the wrong question.

It’s the question leaders across hedge funds, fintechs, and data-heavy organizations ask most often. The problem is framing. If you start with the wrong question, you end up with the wrong structure, the wrong resourcing plan, and the wrong team.

Stop Asking: “How Many People Do We Need?”

Start Asking: “What Combination of Expertise Gives Us the Best Outcomes?”

Headcount is the least useful variable when you're trying to build a high-performing team. Yet it's the variable leaders worry about the most because it’s tangible, measurable, and easy to justify to finance.

But the companies that consistently outperform don’t think in terms of bodies, they think in terms of capability.

Research is crystal clear on this: a meta-analysis from Oxford shows that top engineers are 5–15x more productive than average contributors. McKinsey has found similar ranges, especially in complex or regulated environments.

You don’t need more people; you need the right people doing the right work in the right structure.

The Question That Actually Builds a High-Performing Team

If you strip away the noise, one question consistently produces the best outcomes:

“What combination of talent, expertise, and cost structures gives us the most capable team inside our actual budget reality?”

When leaders shift from headcount to capability, from flexibility to fit, from generalists to domain experts, their teams get faster, more accurate, and far more cost-effective.

The strength of your engineering team isn’t determined by how many people you can hire. It’s determined by whether you’re asking the right questions when you build it.

If you’d like help strategically building a capable engineering team, let’s chat.