Maybe the multiplier is 4x and by the time you have a team of ten you're back down to 2x? My theory is a bit of a hyperbole and I don't know what the multipliers would be? But I know that many times you can move quick when you're small.

And to your point, a single person can easily get stuck, I know that applies to me many times.

I have a theory that when you have 2 developers working in synergy, you're at something like 1.8x what 1 person can do. As you add more people you approach 2x until some point after which you start to decrease productive. I don't think that point is far beyond 5.

I like the fictional way the article starts!

When chatGPT first gained traction I imagined a future where I'm writing code using an agent, but spending most of my time trying to convince it that the code I want to write is indeed moral and not doing anything that's forbidden by it's creators.

That comment made me wonder how long the person advised have spent working in tech, I'd wager that it's < 5 years.

I'm not saying that to be snide. When you come from a academic CS setting like university, there are so many new things to learn in industry that after 5 years you could still be completely unfamiliar with a lot of things.

Well, I hope you take this story as a caution that you shouldn't do that in any way that can seriously compromise your career/health/finances.