One of the deeper messages of the Mythical Man Month is that large teams in software don't work. The author of the post mentions that he should have known the project was doomed when the hiring manager didn't think 26 employees on a "startup" project was too many.

Yeah. According to the Mythical Man Month (or was it Peopleware?), when someone gives you 100 software engineers to do a project, what are you supposed to do? Set up 10 teams of 10 people, don't tell them about each other and make them all do the same project.

The argument is that you are going to be better off doing that and picking the best one at the end, than you are running the project with 100 engineers in the first place.

The OP reads totally true to me.

I don't remember that from the Mythical Man Month.

Maybe it's in reference to the fact this "startup in a startup" scaled people to a point of disfunction, which is kind of what Mythical Man Month is getting at as well.

But you are right, it isn't really the primary point he is making.

I don't see the connection, either. Nor to how having small wins is like deus ex machina.