There is no productivity growth attributed to AI. In fact, serious attempts to measure AI performance show that even if AI makes some code entry tasks faster, total product delivery times are, in fact, increased.
(This should be obvious once you realize coding AIs are technical debt generation machines.)
I think we've gone beyond anecdotal evidence of experience engineers finding true value in this new tech. It may not have registered yet, but skilled people are unequivocally finding value in these tools.
I agree that we have yet to settle down on the true costs involved (which will probably end up at "slightly less than a junior engineer" or something like that) - but we are months beyond the idea that it's all smoke and mirrors and no one is getting value out of it.
Sure, whatever. That would be anecdotal evidence.
I think we are past the point where we can just dismiss their input - these new tools do legitimately add value, it appears.
Experienced engineers are always finding "time-saving value in new tech". This is a tale as old as the craft of programming itself, and all the hundreds and thousands of ways to hack the development experience engineers obsess over has never resulted in tangible gains for delivering quality software on time.
> but this time the LLM technology is magic and it will be different!
How many more SOTA models? How many more weeks? Will you "trust the plan" forever?
- AI will replace all workers (unlikely today) - AI speeds up programming (yes today)
It can be true that the engineer is more productive but the end result is the firm is in a net negative state.