[TeMPOraL]

It's not. Consider that replacing the only $200k software engineer on the project is different than replacing the third or tenth $200k software engineer on the project. To the extent AI is improving productivity of those engineers, it reduces the need for adding more engineers to that team. That may mean firing some of them, or just not hiring new ones (or fewer of them) as the project expands, as existing ones + AI can keep up with increased workload.

[nand_gate]

I'm biased but my money's on the end result of AI being fewer engineers per team but also teams as a concept becoming obsolete.

Why keep legacy structures, with luxuries like POs or PMs if AI becomes powerful as you say - it'll just be 'one man startups' for better or worse.

Any empire-building VP should probably fear the wishful AI future they're praying for!

[TeMPOraL]

> it'll just be 'one man startups' for better or worse.

Not necessarily. The reality is, whatever some people can do individually, if they team up, they can do more together. The teams and small startups will remain for now, and so will big companies.

I do imagine however that the internal structure will change. As the AI gets better and able to do more independently, people will shift from pair programming to more of a PM role (this is happening now), and this I imagine will quickly collapse further.

Even today, LLMs seem more suited for project management than doing actual coding - it's just the space in-between that's the problem. I.e. LLMs can code great in the small, and can break down work very well, but keeping the changes consistent and following the plan is where they still struggle. As that gap closes, I'm not really sure how the team composition would look like. But I don't doubt there'd still be teams.