Project headcount forward at a compound growth rate and see when the team doubles.
Compounding growth is exponential, not linear: the increase in the final period is far larger than in the first. The doubling figure comes from the logarithmic form and is the quickest sanity check on whether a growth rate is plausible. Capacity and budget plans built on linear extrapolation understate compound headcount growth badly over a three-to-five year horizon.
Workforce Growth
Projected = current × (1 + growth rate)^periods
Projected = current × (1 + growth rate)^periods Compounding growth is exponential, not linear: the increase in the final period is far larger than in the first. The doubling figure comes from the logarithmic form and is the quickest sanity check on whether a growth rate is plausible.
Capacity and budget plans built on linear extrapolation understate compound headcount growth badly over a three-to-five year horizon.
This calculator takes 3 inputs: Current headcount, Growth per period, Number of periods. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.