Org Chart Examples for Companies From 10 to 500 People

Org chart examples online tend to be one of two things: a famous company’s chart nobody can verify, or a template gallery with the same five boxes in different colors. Neither tells you what your chart should look like at 40 people versus 400.

So the examples below are illustrative structures at five headcounts, from a 10-person startup to a 500-person company. Names and titles are placeholders. What’s real is the pattern: where the first manager layer appears, when departments need their own branch, and the point where one page stops working.

If you’ve never drawn one, the step-by-step org chart guide covers the mechanics. This post is about shape.

Count spans before you count boxes

Headcount doesn’t decide what a chart looks like. Span of control does: how many people report directly to each manager. Gallup’s research on span of control found the median team holds steady at about five to six people per manager, while the average rose from 10.9 direct reports in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025, pulled up by a minority of very large teams. In the same Gallup data, 37% of managers oversee fewer than five people.

That gap between median and average is what you’ll fight when drawing. Most branches on your chart will be small. A few will be very wide, and those are the ones that wreck the layout.

McKinsey’s 2017 article on spans of control sorts managers into five archetypes, from a player/coach with three to five direct reports to a coordinator with 15 or more. Keep those ranges in mind below. An 18-person support team under one lead isn’t a mistake. It’s just the branch you’ll need to stack vertically.

Example 1: the 10-person company

                 CEO (founder)
     ┌─────────┬───────┴─┬──────────┬──────────┐
    CTO      Sales      Ops     Marketing    Design
(co-founder)
  ┌──┬──┴──┬──┐
 Eng Eng  Eng Eng

At 10 people the chart is mostly a who-does-what list. The team already knows the reporting lines. New hires and contractors are the real audience. Google Sheets can draw this from two columns, name and manager, as Google’s Docs Editors Help on organizational charts shows.

The one structural call is whether a co-founder holds a branch. Draw it honestly. If engineers go to the CTO for decisions, show that, even when the titles feel big for a company this small.

What breaks first? Nothing on the page. The risk is that nobody updates it, because everyone assumes everyone knows.

Example 2: 25 people and the first real managers

                              CEO
      ┌──────────────┬─────────┴─────┬────────────────┐
  Head of Eng   Head of Sales   Head of Ops    Head of Marketing
  8 engineers   5 AEs + SDRs    4: finance,     3 marketers
                                HR, office

This is the size where the founder stops managing everyone and a second row of names gets reports of its own. Put team counts inside the boxes and list names underneath. A 25-box chart on one slide is legible today, but the counts-plus-list habit is the one that survives the next 30 hires.

Watch the Ops box. At this size one person often covers finance, HR and the office, and the chart should say so in their title. Don’t invent three boxes for one human.

Example 3: split 60 people by department

                                  CEO
   ┌────────────┬─────────────┬───┴──────────┬──────────┬──────────────┐
  CTO        VP Sales     VP Customer       CFO     Head of People
   │            │             │              │            │
 Eng Mgr A   AEs (8)      Support (12)   Finance (3)    HR (2)
 Eng Mgr B   SDRs (6)     CSMs (5)                    Office (2)
 Product (4)

At 60, names don’t fit in a row and they don’t need to. Group by department, show each leader, and put counts in the boxes. That’s the department-column layout from the org chart template guide. Engineering now has two managers under the CTO, so it’s the first branch three layers deep.

The wide branch is Support. Twelve agents under one lead sits inside the facilitator range in McKinsey’s span archetypes, which is fine for the team and awkward for the drawing. Stack those 12 as a vertical list instead of a row.

Example 4: 150 people with directors and dotted lines

                                 CEO
   ┌──────────┬───────────┬──────┴──────┬────────────┬───────────┐
  CTO      VP Sales   VP Customer   VP Marketing    CFO     VP People
   │
   ├── Dir. Platform ── 3 Eng Mgrs ── 24 engineers
   ├── Dir. Product ─── 6 PMs
   └── Dir. Design ──── 5 designers ┄┄┄┄ dotted line to an eng squad

Two things change around 150. A director layer shows up between executives and managers, so the biggest branches run four layers deep. And dotted lines arrive: a designer reports to the design director but spends every day with one engineering squad.

Stop trying to fit everyone on one page. Draw a top-level chart of the executive team with headcount per function, then one page per department. Use dashed connectors for the dotted lines and add a two-line legend, or half your readers will think the dashes are a printing error.

Photos start to earn their space here too. At 150 you no longer recognize everyone in the kitchen, and the guide to org charts with photos covers when faces are worth the maintenance.

Example 5: 500 people across functions and locations

                                   CEO
       ┌────────────────┬───────────┴──────┬───────────────────┐
     COO              CRO                 CTO              CFO + People
       │                │                   │
  Site lead, HQ     Regional VPs (2)    Directors (4)
  Site lead, office 2   │                   │
                    Sales mgrs (8)      Eng mgrs (12)

At 500, the org chart is a set of charts. The executive page shows six or so leaders. Below them, location starts to matter as much as function: a site lead at a second office may run facilities and the front desk while most people in that building report into functions based somewhere else.

Do the arithmetic before you draw. Gallup’s span of control data puts the median team at five to six people per manager. With spans of six, each layer multiplies by six: 6, then 36, then 216. A 500-person company with typical spans fits in about five layers, counting the CEO. If your chart has eight, that’s an org design finding, not a formatting problem.

A hand-drawn chart this size is wrong within weeks. Generate it from the manager field in your HR or identity system, and treat the drawing as an output, never the source.

How the five examples compare

These are illustrative ranges, not benchmarks:

Whatever your size, the drawing is only as good as the list behind it: name, title, reports to. The Excel org chart guide shows that list format, and the employee directory template covers the other fields worth keeping alongside it.

FAQ

What are the main types of org charts?

Most fall into four shapes: hierarchical (top-down), functional (grouped by department), matrix (people with a solid-line manager and a dotted-line lead), and flat (almost everyone reporting to one or two people). Real companies usually mix them, for example a functional chart with a few dotted lines.

How many layers should a 100-person company have?

Usually three or four, counting the CEO. If a 100-person chart has six layers, the spans are probably too narrow, with managers who each have one or two reports. Count direct reports per manager before you redraw anything.

Should an org chart include contractors?

Include them if people need to find them, and mark them so nobody mistakes them for employees. A label or a different box style works. If contractors rotate every few weeks, list them on a separate page so the main chart doesn’t go stale.

How do you make an org chart for a small company?

Start with a spreadsheet of three columns: name, title and who they report to. Under about 15 people, put everyone in one or two rows beneath the founder. Excel, PowerPoint and Google Sheets can all draw the chart from that list.

What is the difference between a flat and a hierarchical org chart?

A flat chart has few layers and wide rows, with most people reporting to a founder or a handful of leads. A hierarchical chart has more layers, with managers between the top and the front line. Most companies start flat and add layers somewhere between 20 and 60 people.

Stop redrawing the chart after every reorg

Every example above has the same weak spot: someone has to redraw it. We’re building the alternative. InstaCheckin People, our employee directory and org chart app, is coming soon.

A browsable org chart where you move up to a manager or down to direct reports is coming soon. Profiles that show each person’s manager, direct reports and assistants are coming soon too, and contractors will get a badge so the 500-person chart stays honest. Sync with Google Workspace and Microsoft Entra ID is also coming soon, so when someone changes managers in your identity system, the chart follows.

Compare approaches on our org chart software page, then join the waitlist for People, our org chart app that’s coming soon. We’ll email you when it opens.