I talked to a founder who was paying $40,000 a month to an agency.
He still couldn’t get a feature shipped in under 6 weeks.
Not because the agency was lazy. Not because the developers were bad. The structure itself was the problem.
Here’s how it worked.
The founder had calls with an account manager.
The account manager translated requirements to a project manager.
The project manager assigned tickets to developers.
The developers wrote code based on tickets that had already lost half the context.
When the founder had a question about implementation, it took 3 days to get an answer.
The question went from founder → account manager → project manager → developer.
Then the answer came back the same way.
Four people were involved in every decision. None of them understood both the business and the code.
The agency wasn’t scamming him.
This is just how agency models work at scale.
They optimize for utilization, not speed. Every developer is split across 2-3 projects. Context switching is constant. Deep focus on one product is rare.
Then there’s the pricing math.
$40,000 per month sounds like you’re getting a team.
In reality, you’re getting fractions of people.
- Half a senior developer.
- A quarter of a PM.
- A designer working across multiple clients.
The total time dedicated to your product might be just 60-80 hours per month.
For $40K.
The alternative isn’t hiring a cheaper agency.
It’s working with one senior developer embedded in your team.
One person who understands the business, writes the code, and communicates directly with you.
No translation layers. No context loss. No 3-day turnaround on a simple question.
That model exists. It costs a fraction of what agencies charge. And it ships faster because decisions happen in minutes, not weeks.
Have you worked with an agency for development?
What surprised you most about the experience?