Keeping your A-Team together with developer AI

When I look back at my career, the most fun and fulfilling times I have had has been tied to impactful projects with a team that is clicking. This has often happened at a startup, but it has also happened in some magical moments where the team is able to move fast and with agency within a larger company.

One core philosophy that DHH has often discussed as a key part of The Rails Way, is how it scales from a single developer. From Hello World to IPO. The way to do that is to be able to do more with less, and keep as much of the system in your head as possible. Allow room for the important pieces, and keep complexity from taking up valuable space.

When we come up with new infrastructure that compresses the complexity, we see amazing scale such as what the WhatsApp team was able to build with a small team.

I believe AI native tools can help here in a slightly different way. For example, you can somewhat outsource some of the complexity to the system. The brain budget can be augmented, and some of it can be swapped in, in real time.

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