I might humbly suggest that the tasks you need to be competitive as an engineer in 2026 are different than they were in 2024. And they’ll be even more different in 2028.

If you’re using open weight models to code basically the same as you always have been but just a little faster, while your competitors are using frontier models to go 10x faster, you haven’t saved anything.

Now, granted, the real question comes down to whether they’re going 10x faster, and whether that’ll hold up in the long term. But that’s the gamble as I see it. And to me, open weight models aren’t worth the risk. $200 is 0.5% of my little company’s revenue. It would be foolish of me to try and save that money.