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AI coders think they’re 20% faster — but they’re actually 19% slower
(pivot-to-ai.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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The point isn’t to increase employee productivity (or employee happiness, obviously).
The point is to replace most employees.
In order for that to happen, LLM-assisted entry-level developers merely need to be half as good as expert human unassisted developers, at scale, at a lower aggregate cost.
This is a very "nine women can make a baby in one month".
The idea that there can even be two half as good developers is a misunderstanding of how anything works. If it worked like that, the study would be a dud because people could just run two AIs for 160% productivity.
Are these entry-level developers that are merely half as good as expert human unassisted developers in the room with us right now?
"I'm not scared a LLM is going to be able to replace me. I'm scared that CEO are going to think that"
AI->cocaine filter: Cocaine isn’t going to replace you. Someone using cocaine is going to replace you.
Point 3. is what I’m getting at. They desperately want to unload expensive developers, so bad. They’ll try it, and keep trying it, even as products suffer, in the hopes of driving down labor costs.
That's a fool's errand. Only those highly skilled experienced devs are going to spot certain subtle issues or architectural issues that will bite everyone the moment the product grows larger.
Of course it is.
They’re still gonna do it.
as one of the people representing the “hero group” (for lack of a better term) your comment references: eh. I didn’t start out with all this knowledge and experience. it built up over time.
it’s more about the mode of thinking and how to engage with a problem, than it is about specific “highly skilled” stuff. the skill and experience help/contribute, they refine, they assist in filtering
the reason I make this comment is because I think it’s valuable that anyone who can do the job well gets to do the thing, and that it’s never good to gatekeep people out. let’s not unnecessarily contribute to imposter syndrome
The hypothetical is literally underskilled newbies replacing oldhats.
the astute reader may note a certain part of my comment addressed a particular aspect of this
and yet you're still wrong. Interesting how popularity isn't correlated with correctness.
You're the one bringing up popularity in response to a substantial argument. I hope you're okay...
and upon hearing the lesson, the journeyman went to the pub
Entry-level devs ain't replacing anyone. One senior dev is going to be doing the work of a whole team
For now.
But when a mid-tier or entry level dev can do 60% of what a senior can do, it’ll be a great way to cut costs.
I don’t think we’re there now. It’s just that that’s the ultimate goal - employ fewer people, and pay the remaining people you do employ less.
Yeah, the glorious future where every half-as-good-as-expert developer is now only 25% as good as an expert (a level of performance also known as being "completely shit at it"), but he's writing 10x the amount of unusable shitcode.
You scoff, but this is exactly the future CEOs and upper management absolutely want.
Why? Because labor is too expensive and “entitled” (wanting things like time off, health insurance, remote work, and so on).
They will do everything they can to squeeze labor and disempower the bargaining capability that knowledge workers have.
Why do you think Microsoft has been trying to screengrab everything that knowledge workers do? To train their models to do that work instead. Why did they just lay off thousands of workers and direct something like $80 billion towards AI investments?
You know why.
Quality doesn’t matter. Income minus expenses matter. You are an expense. They will do everything they can to replace you as soon as they catch even a whiff of economic viability (or even before), because even if it’s more costly right now, it can drive down labor costs by putting the squeeze on employees.
And that is the point.
Okay but that is different from the argument that entry developers only need to be half as good to deliver a working product
Same as how an entry level architect can build a building 60% as tall, and that'll last 60% as long, right?
Edit: And an entry level aerospace engineer with AI assistance will build a plane that's 60% as good at not crashing.
I'm not looking forward to the world I believe is coming...
Get 2 and the plane will be 120% as good!
In fact if children with AI are a mere 1% as good, a school with 150 children can build 150% as good!
I am sure this is how project management works, and if it is not maybe Elon can get Grok to claim that it is. (When not busy praising Hitler.)
this brooks no argument and it’s clear we should immediately throw all available resources at ai so as to get infinite improvement!!~
(I even heard some UN policy wonk spout the AGI line recently 🙄)
is there like a character sheet somewhere so i can know where i fall on this developer spectrum
It's going to be your INT bonus modifier, but you can get a feat that also adds the WIS modifier
For prolonged coding sessions you do need CON saving throws, but you can get advantage from drinking coffee (once per short rest)
I must have picked up a feat somewhere because I hit that shit way more than once per short rest
This simply isn't how software development skill levels work. You can't give a tool to a new dev and have them do things experienced devs can do that new devs can't. You can maybe get faster low tier output (though low tier output demands more review work from experienced devs so the utility of that is questionable). I'm sorry but you clearly don't understand the topic you're making these bold claims about.
I think more low tier output would be a disaster.
Even pre AI I had to deal with a project where they shoved testing and compliance at juniors for a long time. What a fucking mess it was. I had to go through every commit mentioning Coverity because they had a junior fixing coverity flagged "issues". I spent at least 2 days debugging a memory corruption crash caused by such "fix", and then I had to spend who knows how long reviewing every such "fix".
And don't get me started on tests. 200+ tests, of them none caught several regressions in handling of parameters that are shown early in the frigging how-to. Not some obscure corner case, the stuff you immediately run into if you just follow the documentation.
With AI all the numbers would be much larger - more commits "fixing coverity issues" (and worse yet fixing "issues" that LLM sees in code), more so called "tests" that don't actually flag any real regressions, etc.