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A comment on Five months treating bugs like patients and coding agents like a medical team. Parent comment

Re:Five months treating bugs like patients and coding agents... by paid_dot_expert on Sunday October 11, 2026 @06:18AM (#50041572)
I don't get your maths? [1] 160/9 months != 600 for any given number of days a week e.g. 5,6,7 (something between 6 and 7), but where did the 9 come from, is it some kind of adjustment for weekends? Anyway there is also a concept of "fully loaded employee cost".

In any case the way to think of this is not "/day".

The reason is simple. If you buy 1000 barrels of oil, you buy 1000 barrels of oil not 17.4 days of oil. There is now a disconnect between work done and time. Infact you would be sane if you said "that result I can get in 2 days for $4172, if you can get me that same result in 1 hour, I'd pay $8344". See where this is going?

Yes a lot of thought work is now a commodity, and if you want the commodity faster (last minute booking, uber to come quicker etc.) you pay more not less. Value being $/hour is over.

[1] The ? acts as both a question and a regex.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Five months treating bugs like patients and coding agents... by tujux on Sunday October 11, 2026 @01:07PM (#50045371)
Its an approximate 160k รท (9 months x 28 days a month) = 635.

I dont think this is comparable to buying a barrel of oil at all. A software factory like this, I'm assuming is going to be run 24/7.

I get what you're saying, but thats assuming someone's buying their software at the faster pace as well, which we don't know.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Five months treating bugs like patients and coding agents... by paid_dot_expert on Sunday October 11, 2026 @11:04PM (#50050871)
True but the pace of buying doesn't matter for this argument (of course it matters for business longevity!). What matters is if you spend $160k on tokens or an employee then ... what gets more done.

For some jobs the employee comes out top, for others the tokens. This landscape will continually shift. However definitely the "per hour" is just some intermediate part of the value calculation can can't be directed compared.

If there were a way to pop out the next Lovable with $160k tokens and you can have that land in 4 hours, would you pay. Well yeah someone would, just like they'd buy $160k of oil if they needed it. It would be even better than paying $80k to an employee who took 6 months.

[ Parent | on HN ]