(Author summary) 

Many complex systems have to allocate their units to different functions: cells in an embryo develop into different tissues, servers in a computer cluster perform different cal- culations, and insect workers choose particular tasks, such as brood care or foraging. Here we demonstrate that this process does not automatically become easier or harder with sys- tem size. If more workers are present than needed to complete the work available, some workers will always be idle; despite this, having surplus workers makes redistributing them across the tasks that need work much faster. Thus, unexpectedly, such surplus, idle workers may potentially significantly improve system performance. Our work suggests that interdisciplinary studies between biology and distributed computing can yield novel insights for both fields.