Small teams, large leverage

Small teams are no longer disadvantaged by scale. They are constrained by clarity.

Three engineers with clear boundaries, good abstractions, and automated feedback loops can now produce what previously required entire departments. Not because they work harder, but because the system does more work than the people.

Leverage comes from removing coordination, not adding effort. From encoding decisions once instead of re-making them daily. From building systems that compound quietly instead of scaling headcount loudly.

Large teams still matter for certain problems. But for most modern software, progress is limited by cognitive overhead, not manpower. Every extra person adds communication cost. Every unclear interface adds drag.

The future belongs to teams that design themselves as systems first, humans second.