But you're depending on 1 programmers instead of spreading your risk into 3 different developers.
Lots of angles to consider not just in terms of monetary. Human's behaviour/attitude/mindset is a very large unknown despite however hard we tried to make a "human" as static as a "resource".
Sure, but a 3x faster programmer will still be more efficient than 3 other programmers, because there is no communication overhead and opportunities for misunderstandings.
I would rather hire somebody really good for $6k / month than 3 people for $2k each.
Maybe you don't want to replace three java programmers with one clojure programmer, but it might not be so bad to replace fifteen java programmers with five clojure programmers.
I would definitely agree with all the advantages of having less (less people to manage, less communication, less lines of code) provided that you can find the ideal situation.
But alas, finding the ideal situation is like winning the NBA Championship trophy: you need all the stars to line up including "Lucky" star.
