What's happening in tech right now
Block just cut nearly 4,000 jobs, almost half its workforce. Google laid off 12,000. Meta 11,000.
All three are profitable. Revenue is growing.
Jack Dorsey put it pretty directly in his memo to employees: smaller, flatter teams with modern tools work better than large organizations.
I think he's right. And I can back that up with my own experience.
What this has to do with me
Since early 2026, I've been working on four different app projects. At the same time. By myself.
And I'm shipping faster than most teams I know.
Not because I type particularly fast. But because I do something different from most developers: I don't just build features to spec. When someone comes to me with an app idea, I first try to understand what the actual problem is. What do the users really need? How should the app feel? What makes sense technically, what doesn't?
I handle the entire path from idea to finished product. UX, frontend, backend, infrastructure. Everything from one person, everything from one mind.
In a traditional team, it works differently. The founder explains their idea to a project manager, who passes it to a designer, who passes it to a frontend developer, who passes it to a backend developer. After four handoffs, what comes out is usually different from what was originally meant.
Four projects that show this
Hundeo, over 1 million downloads
A Flutter app with a Go backend. User system, push notifications, in-app purchases, admin dashboard. I built everything. More about the project.
QUESS, mental health with Bluetooth hardware
Real-time kinesiology measurements, Bluetooth integration, cloud sync. The backend runs on Serverpod. Not a standard project, but exactly the kind of app where it helps when one person understands the entire stack.
Bori Bau, test app after two weeks
Documentation app for construction. Managing orders, uploading photos, generating reports. From idea to working test app in two weeks of development time.
DragonBoat Pro, my own product
Seat distribution for dragon boat teams. Calculates optimal crew composition based on weight, experience, and boat balance. Dragon boating is my passion, I'm a coach myself and I'm building the app I always wished I had.
Four apps, completely different industries and requirements. All in parallel.
Why parallel works
Every project has downtime. The client needs time for feedback. Apple is reviewing the update. Hardware delivery takes three days longer.
If I were working in a team, that would mean: call a meeting, give a status update, replan tickets.
Instead, I just switch to the next project and pick up where I left off. No overhead, no waiting.
The problem with large teams
There's a concept in software development called Brooks' Law. The short version: more people on a software project don't make it faster. Past a certain point, they make it slower.
Fred Brooks described this back in 1975. The reason is simple: the more people working on the code, the more time gets spent on communication. Dailies, sprint planning, code reviews, architecture meetings, cross-team coordination. 10 developers don't produce 10x the output. More like 3x on a good day.
For me, all of that falls away. I don't have meetings with myself. An idea goes straight into implementation.
Why "just one developer" is the wrong picture
When people hear that a single person is building their app, many think: okay, that's the budget option. Less professional, but cheaper.
That's not really accurate anymore.
The tools are different now. AI-assisted development, frameworks like Flutter, cloud infrastructure you can set up in minutes. Writing code has become cheap. Really cheap. What that looks like in practice is in when AI writes your Flutter app.
I can take customer feedback and turn it into working code, often the same day. Producing new code is no longer the problem. What comes after is: testing. Finding bugs. Fixing bugs. Making sure the new stuff doesn't break the old stuff. Every change needs to be verified. Testing is the new bottleneck.
In a large team, this quickly turns into chaos. More pull requests, more merge conflicts, more coordination around who tests what and when. With me, everything runs through one head. I know what I changed, I know what's affected, and I can test precisely instead of blindly checking everything.
The hard part today is no longer the code. It's understanding what should be built, and reacting quickly when things change. A single person with oversight of the entire project can often do that better than a team that has broken everything into subtasks.
What this means for you specifically
If you're currently thinking about having an app built: the rules have changed.
A few years ago, a team of 5 to 10 people was the "safe" choice. More people meant more security. At least that was the theory.
Today it works differently. A single experienced developer who truly understands the problem can deliver faster and often better. Because there's no information loss. Because changes can be implemented immediately. Because you're talking to one person, not a chain of intermediaries.
You pay for the result, not for the organization around it.
Where the opportunity is
Most agencies still work on the old model. Large teams, long timelines, budgets with lots of zeros. While they're still writing their proposal for a 6-month project with eight developers, I already have the first working version with the client.
Not because I'm better than eight people combined. But because between the idea and the finished app, there's nobody who needs to coordinate with someone else.
Conclusion
Large teams were the standard for a long time. More people meant more capability. That's changed.
Right now, early 2026, I'm feeling this more clearly than ever. Four apps in parallel, one point of contact, zero overhead. With the tools available today, that's realistic. And my clients get their app faster than they're used to from agencies. How I keep AI agents in check while doing this is in skills, hooks and quality gates.
Is this the right solution for every project? Probably not. But for most app projects that come my way, it is.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
The same thing happens in teams, people get sick, take leave, quit. The difference: with me, one person knows the entire project. There's no knowledge stuck in a colleague who happens to be on vacation.
Yes. Full-stack development is my profession. I've been doing this for years and have built apps with over a million downloads. By myself.
Depends on complexity. A simple app can be ready in two to four weeks. More complex projects take two to four months. That's often significantly faster than with teams, because the coordination effort disappears entirely.
Usually yes, 30 to 50 percent less. You're paying for actual work, not for the organization around it.
I know every line of code personally. Updates, bugfixes, and new features are fast because I don't need to onboard anyone.
This article was inspired by the current discussion around Block's workforce reduction.
