There are more than two options. What about great engineers with great models?
Again, I was answering to:
> You don't win the stock market or make the deadliest drone by switching to the cheap model
The question is not "can you win with the best model?", it is "can you not win without the best model?".
Really? How many times a small team has outperformed a much bigger one just because they were "doing it right"?
I have been in software companies where most software produced was bad. Not just the code, the overall design everywhere. So... bad engineers with the most expensive model, or great engineers with cheaper models?