"I have worked for both large and small organizations. In the small organizations, I was the only network engineer or had a small team. I managed teams of many network engineers in the larger organizations, and our team was but one within the larger network operations organization. This provided me the experience of monitoring my team's activity and recognizing when the workload was about to exceed the team's capacity. It's hard to define a specific stage of a company's growth at which this occurs. Indicators I depend on include the amount of network traffic and the number of users and nodes on the network, including internal users, partners, suppliers, customers, and others. Criteria I use for expanding my team include the number of hours we are currently working, any failures we experience on the network due to a lack of maintenance or planning, and the company's projected growth during the next 6 to 12 months. I always maintain a pipeline of qualified network engineering candidates which I can bring on board quickly when necessary."
