Every layer of review makes you 10x slower

A rule of thumb holds that every layer of approval in a process makes it 10x slower in wall-clock time, not effort. The author argues that AI coding tools don't solve this bottleneck because the review pipeline remains unchanged — and may even worsen as AI generates more code faster. Drawing on W.E. Deming's quality philosophy and the Toyota Production System, the post argues that adding QA layers actually reduces quality by misaligning incentives. The real solution is to eliminate review stages by engineering quality into the system from the start, building trust within small teams, and designing well-defined modular interfaces. Small startups with fewer review layers are positioned to benefit most from AI-assisted development, while larger organizations with entrenched review cultures will struggle.