Paul Reinheimer in Elk: "If an "AI" company can sell you acc..."

If an "AI" company can sell you access to software that will replace a $250k/year software engineer. They're going to charge $249k/year for it.

That's how capitalism works.

Well, they're going to charge $20k/year at first, during the land rush phase. Wait for some competitors to die off. Keep it low a while longer to kill off the incumbents. Then it'll jump up a bunch, before finally being even more expensive than the original thing.

See also: Uber & AirBnB.

February 16, 2026 at 4:08:03 PM

Get ready for surge pricing on your developer hours.

uuuh I might do surge pricing on my consulting hours. This needs a proprietary formula based on weather, caffeine intake, technical debt status of the client project, percentage of time spent in status meetings and moon phase

surge pricing for meetings is a GOOD idea

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WTFs/hr is a timeless metric.

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the moon phase is very important it dictates how much meat I crave and how much coffee I need in the morning

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omg, crunch pricing for when something breaks in prod

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can't wait to see those end of quarter bills

I respectfully disagree. They will at least charge $250k/year arguing that an AI never goes on vacation and never need sick leave.