A 10x engineer with AI doesn’t become 11x. They become 100x.
That’s the math some companies are getting wrong right now. If AI turns a baseline engineer into a 10x contributor, it turns your senior engineers into 100x contributors. The ratio stays the same but the absolute gap in output explodes. Before AI, the difference between your best and average engineer was 9 units of work. After AI, it’s 90.
And you’re thinking about laying off the 100x people?
The 10x engineer was never just being fast at coding. They were fast at everything around the code. They’ve been steeped in the industry long enough to know which trends matter and which ones are just noise. They know what pitfalls to avoid, the architectural decisions that seem fine today but cost you huge headaches later. They can even navigate office politics well enough to get products shipped.
AI doesn’t replace any of that. AI makes all of it more leveraged.
I watched a company cut their senior engineers last year, betting that Claude Code would close the gap. Their team shipped faster than ever. They also built an absolute mess. The velocity was real, the progress wasn’t what it seemed.
The engineers who survived the last three evolutions of the web know when to say no, when to push back, and have an innate ability to get things done. They recruit and lead teams to outcomes, not just output. Those are the people AI amplifies most. Removing them doesn’t save money. It removes the multiplier.
Before you cut headcount, do the math. Not the salary math. The multiplication math.