Meta's experiment with smaller AI-supported engineering "pods" of three to five people increased code changes 220% but only raised shipped features 36% while incidents jumped 40%. Research across 500+ organizations found similar patterns: pull request throughput rose 37% while developer experience fell and engineers spent more time firefighting problems. Optimal team size remains five to eight people, with shrinking best done gradually after identifying which tasks AI can safely handle.
An article arguing that AI will enable organizations to shift from centralized 'circuit-switched' systems to distributed 'packet-switched' networks, drawing a historical parallel to how packet switching displaced the Bell System's circuit-switched telephone network despite initial technical inferiority.