The article touches on it a bit, but I think it also highly depends on the person.
Some people are really good at leading large teams, others are better suited to smaller teams. It really also depends on the makeup of the team and how much you can trust them to execute without you intervening.
I've lead teams of ~20 without issue as a first time lead. It went very well, both for me, and based on feedback, for the team as well.
However what worked well there was that I could trust my team to both execute their work and stay on top of things.
What I found helped was making sure that everyone on the team was made aware of everything going on (in summary of course) so that there was less need to act as the central knowledge store, which is quite common for a lot of leads to turn into.
My experience is that this works fine as long as you 1) have a very well functioning HR team, and 2) nothing inter-personal goes wrong, 3) you have others taking on de facto leadership even if they're not formally in charge (you hint at this when you say you could trust your team to execute and stay on top of things).
But what I've repeatedly seen is that the moment you have conflict, if you don't have a manager per ~4-10 people, you're screwed unless there's a lot of organisational support pulverising the people management over extra people. Because suddenly a manager is spending half their time untangling some conflict and still need to have bandwidth to do all the other things they were doing.
As such I always look on teams with more direct reports than ~5-8 or so with deep suspicion. They may work well now, but they're often one crisis away from total meltdown. They're also often an indication of dysfunctional organisational leadership, who fails at promoting people to distribute responsibility.
"However what worked well there was that I could trust my team to both execute their work and stay on top of things."
This is key. Do you have people you have to take by the hand and guide through every step, or do you have competent, capable ones, able to think for themself (who will get annoyed, if treated like childs).
Reality is usually a mix and a valuable leadership skill is finding out early, who needs close supervision and who not. With very competent people, you can have a very flat hierachie.
I usually tried to lead at most 5-6 people building apps from the 80's until this year when I retired. What you said is basically what I did as well, leading is not dictating, but you do need people who can work with the minimally necessary information and still do what's needed. Keeping people in the dark, insisting on everything be decided by you, giving them no room to thrive, is a guarantee of disaster.
Some people are really good at leading large teams, others are better suited to smaller teams. It really also depends on the makeup of the team and how much you can trust them to execute without you intervening.
I've lead teams of ~20 without issue as a first time lead. It went very well, both for me, and based on feedback, for the team as well.
However what worked well there was that I could trust my team to both execute their work and stay on top of things.
What I found helped was making sure that everyone on the team was made aware of everything going on (in summary of course) so that there was less need to act as the central knowledge store, which is quite common for a lot of leads to turn into.