> I've estimated that LLMs make me 2-5x more productive on the parts of my job which involve typing code into a computer, which is itself a small portion of tha

> I've estimated that LLMs make me 2-5x more productive on the parts of my job which involve typing code into a computer, which is itself a small portion of that I do as a software engineer. I think that the key realization is that there are tasks where LLMs excel and might even buy you 10x productivity, whereas some tasks their contribution might even be net negative. LLM are largely excellent at writing and refactoring unit tests, mainly because their context is very limited (i.e., write a method in a class that calls this specific method of this specific class a specific way and check the output) and their output is very repetitive (i.e., write isolated methods in standalone classes without output that are not called anywhere). They also seem helpful when prompted to add logging. LLMs are also effective in creating greenfield projects, serving as glorified template engines. But when lightly pressed on specific tasks like implementing a cross-domain feature... Their output starts to be at best a big ball of mud.