Sure, but a 3x faster programmer will still be more efficient than 3 other programmers, because there is no communication overhead and opportunities for misunderstandings.
I would rather hire somebody really good for $6k / month than 3 people for $2k each.
Maybe you don't want to replace three java programmers with one clojure programmer, but it might not be so bad to replace fifteen java programmers with five clojure programmers.
I would definitely agree with all the advantages of having less (less people to manage, less communication, less lines of code) provided that you can find the ideal situation.
But alas, finding the ideal situation is like winning the NBA Championship trophy: you need all the stars to line up including "Lucky" star.
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Sure, but a 3x faster programmer will still be more efficient than 3 other programmers, because there is no communication overhead and opportunities for misunderstandings.
I would rather hire somebody really good for $6k / month than 3 people for $2k each.
Sure but people need to go on vacation, multiple projects need to be worked simultaneously, developers may leave their jobs, etc.
There are lots of good reasons to have multiple developers on a project other than simply throughput.
Maybe you don't want to replace three java programmers with one clojure programmer, but it might not be so bad to replace fifteen java programmers with five clojure programmers.
I would definitely agree with all the advantages of having less (less people to manage, less communication, less lines of code) provided that you can find the ideal situation.
But alas, finding the ideal situation is like winning the NBA Championship trophy: you need all the stars to line up including "Lucky" star.
These really good people are quite unstable (moving on or burning out), so the risk is higher.
Me too, unless ofcourse I only have $2k in which case I'll be forced to just higher the the later kind of programmer.