The Code Review Economy Built its Foundations on Sand, and It's Grown too Large to Move

Eric got up from his desk to check the thermostat. The sweat soaking his armpits had convinced him someone turned up the heat again, but this time, the dim screen showed a pleasant 65°F. It didn't make sense; he had taken his jacket off this morning, and it was the middle of the autumn chill.

Only one explanation remained. The stress of getting his code merged was becoming too great.

You see, Eric had been begging Jeongun to review his payment-processing refactor for nearly a week, and she was heading out tomorrow for a two-week trip to Korea. If he was going to get his code in, he would have to find a way to guarantee she would drop everything and review his code.

Luckily, the spark of creativity he needed arrived, and he was ready. Energized by his newfound vision, he tossed on his coat, and made his way to San Mateo Lock Works.

Not half an hour later he was back at the office. Looking down, he smiled, holding three heavy, shining brass keys. Each was etched with Mifflin Inc.'s logo on one side, and the words "EXPEDITED CODE REVIEW" on the other.

He walked up to Jeongun's desk and, as she looked up, placed a key between the two halves of her ergonomic split keyboard.

"One expedited code review, please."

🔑🔑🔑

It didn't take long for others at Mifflin to see the value in these new keys. Before Jeongun was even back from her vacation, one of the three keys was sold for ten real American freedom dollars. People were willing to pay to prevent review-queue hell, and as a result, the company was beginning to look more productive than ever.

Inevitably, knockoffs began to enter the market. Soon there were stainless steel keys purportedly worth three expedited code reviews, and someone from Sales and Marketing started making iron coins for their team, with the label "YOU'RE TAKING THIS CALL NOW."

Eric loved it. His idea was running its course, and running well. People were assigning his creations true value, and they were spreading beyond team borders. He envisioned a company future where no one was ever blocked by a code review again. Yet, he had apprehension in his heart.

An economy built on a currency like this — a sort of drop-in solution to 10x productivity — seemed just a little precarious.

💵💵💵

People kept printing new tokens, and they started stacking up on their desks. "TEN EXPEDITED CODE REVIEWS," "FREE BOBA FOR A WEEK," "1 (ONE) FULL, PAID DAY OFF." Internally, they were trading for more and more. At one point, the CTO dropped $2,000 USD on the PTO coin.

Word of such profits spread quickly, faster even than the increased productivity. The market was beginning to flood with innovation, without a sign of slowing down. As Eric wondered whether inflation would apply to this curious little bubble, Mifflin's first economic boom was in full swing.

Josh from R&D bought an industrial printer and began iterations on a serial-numbered paper form of Mifflin currency. Next, Jawad from the DevOps team started crafting and selling Mifflin Currency Displays, a modern Rolodex for Josh's now properly circulating Mifflin dollar bills.

As the Mifflin market grew, the software team seized the opportunity and forged a coalition dubbed the "Hoodrobin Squad," with their purpose being a Mifflin Dollar (MFD) to USD trading platform. It began by tracking the latest transactions in the community, and soon the squad had deployed agentic arbitrageurs to make thousands of trades within the company to keep the market liquid, while squeezing out a profit for the Hoodrobin Squad themselves.

Eric was watching this all unfold with attentive eyes. The idea of Mifflin dollars was wandering farther from its original form, a tool for organizational efficiency, with every new development. He tried to wrap his head around what was going on, how MFD was gaining so much value, but he couldn't. All he knew was that there was something important missing from everyone's minds.

They had forgotten what Mifflin Dollars were built on.

🏦🏦🏦

As Mifflin's internal economy built into a swell, it began crashing against the boundaries of the company itself. Bonuses were being handed out in MFD, and when housing stipends were converted from USD to MFD too, the outside world was asked a simple question. "What is MFD worth?"

In the county that housed Mifflin's headquarters, San Mateo, Mifflin employees accounted for 2% of the residents, which set the MFD to USD conversion rate at a humble $0.02. Mifflin's Hoodrobin Squad decided to release Hoodrobin publicly, believing it only to be a matter of time before their exclusive hold on MFD/USD conversion would pay massive dividends.

Ignited with productivity from darn near infinite expedited code reviews, Hoodrobin's services expanded blazingly fast, and their user base spread like wildfire.

Mifflin's executives didn't wait to leverage their position. A competing exchange platform, Simplewealth, had no sooner received regulatory approval to trade MFD than it was snatched up by Mifflin and their internally-minted MFD in a hostile acquisition. Any whispers that a monopoly was forming couldn't be heard beneath the sound of paper bills spinning in the winds of profit.

Like a shark dropped into the world's largest aquarium, Mifflin was feasting. As Eric and the story of code review tokens faded into oblivion, Mifflin was gobbling up companies left and right. He started to wonder if this bubble could grow any larger, but the media was eating it up, too. Headlines across the country proclaimed the moonshot story that everyone at Mifflin believed.

Mifflin would bring so much value to the global economy that in just ten or twenty years, work would be optional, and money would be irrelevant.

⌛⌛⌛

Eric sat back down at his desk. Mifflin's meteoric rise was slowing, just like every other media darling before, but it hadn't stopped.

The world believed that Eric's idea was the key to infinite productivity, but sometimes he wondered if it was nothing more than a key to humanity's next Pandora's Box. Mifflin was still making acquisitions, and the New York Stock Exchange was still in talks to switch the entire exchange over to MFD.

It all just looked an awful lot like a bubble, he thought.

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Thanks for reading.

On the off chance you missed the allegory, code review tokens are AI, and Mifflin is the CEOs and venture capitalists fawning over the illusion of increased productivity, without regard for the facts nor the consequences.