I was just wondering what size of an immortal staff was the general concensus on most effective sizewise.  Is a smaller, more intimate staff who handles the essential needs a better balance to the playerbase than a larger staff that may or may not have the same drive and desire as the smaller one?  The mud I am Assistant Admin on has a staff of two, me and the boss, with two 'retired' people who show up every couple weeks, hang out and do a couple things.  Our playerbase is varied and can be anywhere between 5 and 45, depending on event, time and RL situation (holidays, etc).  There are times when the smaller staff we have seems a perfect fit and other times when we simply can't keep control over everything in a satisfactory way, as we're both very in tune with the vision for the mud itself.  When we first opened, nearly three years ago, we had six people on a regular basis and eventually had to phase most of them out, for one reason or another.  This did the necessary things of getting the basic groundwork down, but most of the 'next step' sort of things happened because of the lead and assistant being focused.  The problem we now have is do we regroup and try to expand again or maintain the level we have, because we know the passion and drive for the project is there at the highest level.  
What do you all think?

Depending on the size of the playerbase, you'll want to keep a fair medium of staff available for players. I'd say 1 immortal per 10 players or so. Then they can take care of concerns in a manner that will seem less like a job on the busy days, and give them opportunity to create storylines and quests on the slow days.

You can also give people certain tasks to take care of, which not only takes some of the burden off your own shoulders, but also gives them a goal to work for, and not have to worry about several other things at the same time.

personally I like having a staff of 8, my fiancee as teh coder, myself as the head builder and everything else, and 6 builders. To me that's ideal, as I can I figure on 2 areas per builder per year, giving us 12 new areas a year from them, and hopefully 6 or so of my own.

I think in addition to working on a mud, the staff varies by the number of players you have, their needs, and imm interaction. If you have a mud where the players are largely self sufficient and don't need a lot of imm involvement, then I don't think you need a lot of staff. However, if they need a lot of imm involvement, you may need a lot of staff, or one person who's dedicated to them.

I think it really depends, and it depends on how well your staff knows the world you're in. It would suck to have 4 people dealing with mortals, and each one telling the mortals something different to the same question.