Yep. I’ll die on the hill. Engineer and designers. That’s all we really need.
We started with a very very small team and did all the heavy lifting. Then they started adding PM, marketing, market people, HR, …
We were striving when we were not drowning in meetings, KPIs, management, emails, …
Who provides resources to the Es and Ds? Who hires new ones? Who raises money from investors and banks, and ensures you have cash flow and ROI? How do you manage 100 Es and Ds without a PM?
Small teams are more efficient but (obviously) can't produce at scale. When you scale up, there's enough HR or finance or marketing, or PM, etc. work for full-time specialists. And larger orgs need bureaucracy - if you have a way around that, the world is yours.