Maybe it doesn't need to scale

LinkedIn is full of developers dunking on “vibe coding.”

“It doesn’t scale,” they say. “You can’t build enterprise systems this way.” “What happens when your team grows?”

They’re probably right.

And maybe that’s completely missing the point.

Scale is the wrong metric for personal productivity. It’s like judging a custom-tailored suit by whether it fits everyone in the company.

With AI development tools like Claude Code, personal optimization becomes effortless.

I no longer spend hours reading documentation just to remember how to set up a basic Express server. I don’t wade through boilerplate code to get started. I don’t compromise my vision because the existing tools almost-but-not-quite fit my needs.

I describe what I want. I get exactly what I want.

This isn’t about building Facebook. It’s about solving my problems, the way I think about them, with tools that bend to my mental model instead of forcing me to bend to theirs.

Team coordination? Code reviews? Maintainability? These remain important for large systems. But they’re separate problems from personal effectiveness.

The real challenge isn’t accommodating more developers. It’s amplifying the ones you have.

When I can generate a perfect Obsidian plugin in the time it takes to take a shower, the old rules about scalable development practices feel… quaint.

Maybe it’s about teams that scale through individual superpowers. The best engineering organizations won’t be the biggest. They’ll be small teams where everyone operates at peak personal effectiveness while still collaborating seamlessly.

That’s a different kind of scale entirely.