Quick answer: Yes, with a condition. A client asked Eugene Volkov this at TechEx, half-joking, half-serious. His take: AI hasn’t eliminated the need for engineers. It’s changed what we need them for. Generating code is faster than ever. Making sure it’s secure, scales under real traffic, and won’t become next year’s “nobody understands this module” problem still takes experience and judgment. So smaller teams are possible. But smaller doesn’t mean less senior. It means more involvement from experienced engineers who can guide AI, challenge its output, and catch problems before production does. The better question is: where does this project need human expertise most?
The shallow lesson: AI writes the code, so cut the headcount
Headcount was never the expensive part. Wrong decisions that reach production are.
The real lesson: you’re paying for judgment now, and less for typing
The work that shrank is producing code. The work that stayed is knowing whether that code should exist, whether it’s safe, and whether someone can maintain it a year from now.
The sobering part
A smaller team staffed with juniors and an AI assistant produces code faster than anyone can review it. The bill arrives later, as the module nobody understands.
Full disclosure: Azati sells engineering teams, so we’re aware of how “you still need senior people” sounds coming from us. It’s also where we see software outsourcing heading: smaller teams, AI doing more of the coding, a much higher price on judgment. See our project work.
FAQ
Adapted from a LinkedIn post by Eugene Volkov, Chief Commercial Officer at Azati Software – read the original, written after TechEx.
