Talent, Tokens, Togetherness
Small focused teams that work together with AI will dominate the modern software era
When we build a team or a company we make a list of priorities about what we'll be spending money on. Money is a constraint and nothing is really free, so we have to pick and choose what we spend our money on. In 2026 at least, the answer to that is becoming very clear. You have to spend your money on Talent, Tokens, and being in the same space (Togetherness).
Talent
Agents make boring code is very easy to write. The hard code is still hard. Another way to think about it is that 20% of your job is now 5x faster. Hiring and training needs to focus on new skills: people who can think, communicate, and decide at the product / company level. Coding is the easy part.
Tokens
Most companies will fail at AI because they won't reallocate budget. They'll hire 5 mediocre developers instead of 4 great ones with sufficient AI infrastructure. This is wrong. Teams should be budgeting $2k/month/engineer. You might spend more money but you'll get more.
Togetherness
Teams need high-trust, high-bandwidth collaboration. That's hard to build remotely and most remote teams fail at it. If you CAN do it co-located, do it. Being able to white board, sense body language, and hang out is a big advantage. If you can't, you have to make a deliberate investment in remote culture that most people aren't capable of.
The Balance
Talent vs Togetherness:
The best engineer for your team might live in Warsaw. Do you compromise on talent for co-location? You probably should. Find the best person you can that's willing to build somewhere boring.
Tokens vs Everything:
Every dollar on AI infrastructure is a dollar not spent on another hire or office space. At $2k/month/engineer, a 10-person team spends $240k/year on tokens. That's one entire senior engineer's salary.
Togetherness vs Scale:
Co-location works at 5 people. At 50 people you need multiple offices or embrace remote. Your ideal balance shifts as you grow.
Making the Tradeoff
If you're pre-product-market-fit:
Talent > Tokens > Togetherness. Get the best people anywhere, give them AI tools, coordinate however you need to. Don't compromise on talent for an office.
If you're scaling post-PMF:
Tokens > Togetherness > Talent. Multiply your existing team's output before adding headcount. Your 10-person team with AI can easily outship a 30-person team without it.
If you're resource-constrained:
Talent > Togetherness > Tokens. Great people will figure it out even with limited AI budget. Mediocre people with unlimited tokens still ship mediocre products.
The teams that win will be the ones who understand which of these three to prioritize for their specific situation, not the ones who pretend they can have all three at the same time.