Why Is Your Cheap Developer Taking 3× Longer to Deliver Half the Work
This one surprises people: if you want faster software delivery, hiring cheaper developers will almost always make things slower.
It sounds backwards, but the data backs it up. Research going back decades, including the well-known stu****s in DeMarco and Lister's Peopleware, shows that senior developers can be 10 to 20 times faster than junior ones when solving the same class of problem. Not 10–20% faster. 10–20 times. Because they've solved it before. They recognize the pattern, know the pitfalls, skip the trial-and-error, and write code that doesn't create three new problems while fixing one.
What this means in practice: that developers charging 80% less will frequently take three to four times as long to deliver. Deadlines slip. Launches are delayed. Revenue is deferred. Competitors who moved faster are already capturing your market while your build is still in progress. And in competitive industries, the opportunity cost of a delayed launch is often far larger than the entire development budget.
Speed in software is not about typing faster. It's about knowing what to build, how to build it, and how to avoid the mistakes that slow everything down. That knowledge has a price, and it's almost never the lowest one in the room.
Full read: https://apidots.com/blog/cheap....-developers-cost-mor
