2027 engineering budget - current reqs plus only two unallocated heads, one org-wide gathering every six months, cloud spend modeled as growth-tied

Situation

In the 10/23 2027 budget walkthrough with Chris Baek and Kelly Wall, Peter set the assumptions: open reqs plus the five or six planned engineering, hardware and AI hires, then only two unallocated TBD heads (around April and August/September); an additional IT head comes out of that buffer only if Steve wins the case with Peter, which he has not yet. Ongoing market adjustments for underpaid engineers are independent of any Series B true-up; model engineering cost up about 10 percent. Travel allows one gathering of Peter whole org every six months, not separate six-month gatherings per sub-org - CIQ chose to be remote. Cloud modeled at about 75K per month H1 and 85K H2, since it is customer traffic on Portal and Depot and only rises with revenue. Computer spend 150K; AI budget raised.

Reasoning

A small explicit buffer instead of a padded plan keeps each new head a deliberate argument. The IT headcount question waits until a management issue in that org is resolved, because Peter does not know whether a headcount problem remains after it is fixed. Gatherings are capped at the org level so cost does not scale with the number of managers in a remote company. Cloud is a variable cost of revenue, not overhead to squeeze.

Additional Context

Confirmed by Peter. Meeting was 10/23 but not logged in the prior reflection.

Observed Evidence

every six months, somebody under me is going to have it all, and I think I support that. I am not asking to get Ryan world together every six months and Nathan and Justin world together every six months. / These are not our costs anymore. This is customers hitting Portal and Depot.

Confidence Breakdown

Reasoning Depth Analysis