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
I really would like to be a fly on wall during these executive meetings? Here is what i realized.
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
It won't untangle, but may be a greater agent will help you keep moving...
Soon this equation will not be posed just for engineers.
I would replace the eng. managers
Another option is to replace en existing engineer with someone of greater talent.
someone of greater talent
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.
That’s a pretty pessimistic outlook.
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.
You shouldn't always optimize for the long term. You should optimize for the reality of the environment that you're in. In large, public companies, that usually means looking ahead normally 1-2 quarters unless there are exceptional projects with leadership buy-in.
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.
Hire an engineer and buy a beefy GPU. The foundation models aren't better enough to justify their high costs over open models.