Comment by netcan

Ok... but extrapolating from this to "whole market" paradigms is speculative.

The (imo) question isn't how you produce software, but what the value of this software is. Are you going to make make/better software such that customers pay more, or buy more? Are those customers getting value of this kind?

The answer may be yes. But... it's not an automatic yes.

Instead of programming think of accounting. Say you experience what you are experiencing, but as an accountant. 6 person team replaced by 2-3 hotshots.

So... Maybe you can sell more/better accounting for a higher price. But... potential is probably pretty limited. Over time, maybe business practices will adjust and find uses for this newly abundant capacity.

Maybe you lower prices. Maybe the two hotshot earn as much as the previous team.

If you are reducing team size, and that's the primary benefit... the fired employees need to find useful emplyment elsewhere in the economy for surplus value to be realized.

Mediating all this is the law of diminishing returns. At any given moment, new marginal resources have less productive value than the current allocation.