Ask HN: Would you hire a new engineer, or get 300k worth of tokens for the team? This seems to be question that is being posed to engineering managers |
Ask HN: Would you hire a new engineer, or get 300k worth of tokens for the team? This seems to be question that is being posed to engineering managers |
Spaghetti code written by 5 developers will need 5 + 1 developers to manage.
Same in the AI age spaghetti systems built by agents, will need a greater agent to untangle the mess that itself has created
Someone of potentially greater talent, depending on the quality of the hiring process and the offer you can make.
There is always a risk you end up with someone lesser or equal, especially if you value the institutional knowledge an existing member of the team brings (assuming you're not just starting out and there isn't any). The new person has to represent a significantly higher skill level to be equally useful in their first 6 months if they need to learn how a legacy system works first.
You should optimize for the longer term, not just the next 6 months.
Someone who isn’t talented not only does a disservice to the work, but also brings down the effectiveness of the rest of the team.
Unless you're working on the absolute cutting-edge, you don't need every member of the team to be at the top of their game. It's happened many times in sports that a team full of too many superstars underachieves.