3 ms·

Let's say a decent software engineer gets paid $100k per year (40hr weeks, 50 weeks a year.) $100,000 / (50 weeks * 40 hours) => ~$50 per hour. Extremely cons

• AdieuToLogic 2y ago
  > Extremely conservatively, if this saves a developer ~30 minutes per day, it pays for itself. And when it sends the same developer down a rabbit hole of "something weird is going on" for a couple days (using your math - 2 x 8 * $50 / hr = $800), does it still pay for itself?
  • ikerino 2y ago
    The blog author didn't think so, but there's good anecdotal + empirical evidence that working with LLMs boosts *overall productivity*. (A recent study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188231 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188231) If you lose 8 hrs to weirdness, but save 10 hrs somewhere else, then yeah it does pay for itself. My argument is that it doesn't need to improve overall productivity much to have positive ROI. Whether you agree that these tools improve productivity or not is another question.
    • AdieuToLogic 2y ago
      > If you lose 8 hrs to weirdness, but save 10 hrs somewhere else, then yeah it does pay for itself. > My argument is that it doesn't need to improve overall productivity much to have positive ROI. That makes sense. Problem is, there exists a paradox when relying upon LLM's to make software solutions: People use them to "save time." Saving time by outsourcing understanding to LLM's circumvents learning. Without learning, the tool becomes a crutch. When the crutch breaks, there is nothing behind it to fall back onto.