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# public void saveMoney(AI): The Developer's Guide to Unit Economics


- **Event:** World Congress 2026 North America

## Description

We usually treat cloud costs as an infrastructure problem - something to be solved with better budgets or Reserved Instances. But in a world of serverless and containers, your bill is a direct reflection of your code's efficiency. A memory leak isn't just a bug anymore; it’s a monthly recurring expense. A "chatty" frontend isn't just slow; it’s a self-inflicted DDoS attack on your own wallet.
This lightning talk shifts the FinOps conversation to where costs actually start: the IDE. We’ll trace a single request through a standard GCP stack—from an Angular frontend, through Java services on GKE, and down into Cloud Spanner.
Instead of high-level theory, we’ll look at the specific code-level anti-patterns that wreck unit economics. You’ll see how "polite" frontend code helps GKE bin-packing density, how Java serialization impacts Dataflow costs, and how specific query patterns can quietly destroy a budget. You'll leave with a developer-centric checklist to stop the bleeding in production.

## Speaker

### [Hrushikesh Pokala](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@hrushikesh-pokala)

Senior Software Engineer Lead at Equifax


## Related talks at this congress

- [Optimizing consumption and cost of AI APIs in the enterprise](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1426-optimizing) — Derric Gilling
- [AI ROI: The Hard Unit Economics of AI-Native Engineering](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1687-ai-roi-the-hard-unit) — Manu Gurudatha
- [The $0.15/month Algo-Trader: Architecting High-Performance Serverless Trading Engines](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1673-the-0-15-month-algo) — Vishwak Thatikonda
- [How to generate business value through performance optimizations](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1686-how-to-generate) — Nikolai Sidiropulo

## Watch remotely

Can’t make it to San José? Watch this session live with Pro. You also get:

- All full videos, bookmarks, and playlists
- World Congress livestreams

[See pricing](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/pricing)

## Links

- [Get tickets](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/world-congress-north-america/tickets)