1PlayerOne

Now I understand the meaning of the famous opening sentence of the 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Long As I Can See The Light: https://youtu.be/tMgyIUvz9ak?si=zZq0yHRHmGl7LsFB

If 5 or 6 software developers can do the work of 10, do companies choose to build 10% more stuff? Do they make their existing stuff 10% better? Or are they content to continue building the same amount with 10% fewer people?

1. The default outcome: fewer people, same output (at first) When productivity jumps (e.g., 5–6 devs can now do what 10 used to), most companies do not immediately ship 10% more or make things 10% better. Instead, they usually:

Freeze or slow hiring Backfill less when people leave Quietly reduce team size over time

This happens because:

Output targets were already “good enough” Budgets are set annually, not dynamically Management rewards predictability more than ambition

So the first-order effect is cost savings, not reinvestment.

Productivity gains are initially absorbed as efficiency, not expansion.

2. The second-order effect: same headcount, more scope (but hidden) In teams that don’t shrink, the extra capacity usually goes into things that were previously underfunded:

Tech debt cleanup Reliability and on-call quality Better internal tooling Security, compliance, testing

From the outside, it looks like:

“They’re building the same amount.”

From the inside, it feels like:

“We’re finally doing things the right way.”

So yes, the product often becomes “better,” but in invisible ways.

3. Rare but real: more stuff, faster iteration Some companies do choose to build more—but only when growth pressure is high. This is common when:

The company is early-stage or mid-scale Market share matters more than margin Leadership is product- or founder-led There’s a clear backlog of revenue-linked features

In these cases, productivity gains translate into:

Faster shipping cadence More experiments Shorter time-to-market

But this requires strong alignment. Without it, extra capacity just diffuses.

4. Why “10% more” almost never happens cleanly The premise sounds linear, but software work isn’t. Reasons:

Coordination, reviews, and decision-making still bottleneck Roadmaps are constrained by product strategy, not dev hours Sales, design, legal, and operations don’t scale at the same rate

So instead of:

“We build 10% more”

You get:

“We missed fewer deadlines” “That migration finally happened” “The system breaks less often”

These matter—but they’re not headline-grabbing.

5. The long-run macro pattern Over time, across the industry:

Individual teams → shrink or hold steady Companies → maintain output with fewer engineers Industry as a whole → builds far more software than before

This is the classic productivity paradox:

Local gains → cost control Global gains → explosion of software everywhere

Think:

More apps, not bigger teams More features, not more people More companies, not fatter ones

6. The uncomfortable truth If productivity improves and:

Demand is flat Competition isn’t forcing differentiation Leadership incentives favor cost control

Then yes—companies are content to build the same amount with fewer people. Not because they’re lazy, but because:

Efficiency is easier to measure than ambition Savings are safer than bets Headcount reductions show up cleanly on financials

What say you Hackers? would you trade more stuff for more time?

It is more likely that the people are naturally acquisitive and the ones that succeed then feel the need to continue to do things when the best thing for them and us is for them to stop and just enjoy their wealth.

This model is not unique to China. Quite a number of countries have followed it. China has just followed it to a greater extent than any country in history.

Seems to me that a robot with self-awareness doesn't necessarily mean that it is equivalent to animal or human consciousness...

Who says there are no free lunches?