Second: Don't insult front-end developers. I do both back and front, and I find front-end to require much more skill. Nobody notices if a backend feels slightly off, but it's very obvious when an interaction was built by someone who isn't a great front-end programmer. Both sides are necessary and difficult in their own way; they just require different skillsets.
Actually, that refers to adding more resources to _an already late project_. It explicitly mentions that starting out with more resources can speed up development.
In saying that, 9 women can't make a baby in one month.
I have, it's a brilliant book. Helped me greatly during my career. However it's about scaling an already broken (and late) project in a very naive way.
Luckily we've learnt a lot since then - and it turns out that decomposing the problem into 4-6 person chucks and optimizing for minimum dependencies is a good strategy to close-to-linear scalability :)
"However it's about scaling an already broken (and late) project in a very naive way."
If that's all you remember of it, you really need to reread it (and I find myself mildly skeptical that you did in the first place - although it could very well be that it's been long enough you thought those ideas were elsewhere). The title - and Brooks' Law - is about that, but the book covers a whole lot more. Including discussions of approaches to decomposing problems into <10 person chunks and optimizing for minimum dependencies.
Second: Don't insult front-end developers. I do both back and front, and I find front-end to require much more skill. Nobody notices if a backend feels slightly off, but it's very obvious when an interaction was built by someone who isn't a great front-end programmer. Both sides are necessary and difficult in their own way; they just require different skillsets.