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_sigh_. Really dude? Just because people overestimate them on average doesn’t mean every person does. In fact, you should be well versed enough about the statis
by jama211 1y ago
_sigh_. Really dude? Just because people overestimate them on average doesn’t mean every person does. In fact, you should be well versed enough about the statistics to understand that it will be a spectrum that is highly dependent on both a persons role and how they use it.
For any given new tool, a range of usefulness that depends on many factors will affect people differently as individuals. Just because a carpenter doesn’t save much time because Microsoft excel exists doesn’t mean it’s not a hugely useful tool, and doesn’t mean it doesn’t save a lot of time for accountants, for example.
Instead of trying to tear apart my particular case, why not entertain the possibility that it’s more likely I’m reporting pretty accurately but it’s just I may be higher up that spectrum - with a good combo of having a perfect use case for the tool and also using the tool skilfully?
- sarchertech 1y ago> _sigh_. Really dude? Just because people overestimate them on average doesn’t mean every person does. In the study, every single person overestimated time saved on nearly every single task they measured. Some people saved time, some didn’t. Some saved more time, some less. But every single person overestimated time saved by a large margin. I’m not saying you aren’t saving time, but it’s very unlikely that if you aren’t tracking things very carefully that you are overestimating.
- jama211 1y agoI’ll admit it’s possible my estimates are off a bit. What isn’t up for debate though is that it’s made a huge difference in my life and saved me a ton of time. The fact that people overestimate its usefulness is somewhat of a “shrug” for me. So long as it _is_ making big differences, that’s still great whether people overestimate it or not.
- sarchertech 1y agoIf people overestimate time saved by huge margins, we don’t know whether it’s making big differences or not. Or more specifically whether the boost is worth the cost (both monetary and otherwise).
- jama211 1y agoOnly if we’re only using people’s opinions as data. There are other ways to do this.
- sarchertech 1y agoSure and if we look at data, the. only independent studies we have show either small productivity gains or a reduction in productivity for everything but small greenfield projects.
- jama211 1y agoStudies plural? Can you link them?
- sarchertech 1y agoGoogle for the Stanford study by Yegor Denisov-Blanch. You might have to pay to access the paper, but you can watch the author’s synopsis on YouTube. For low complexity greenfield projects (best case) they found a 30% to 40% productivity boost. For high-complexity brownfield projects (worst case) they found a -5% to 10% productivity boost. The METR study from a few weeks ago showed an average productivity drop around 20%. That study also found that the average developer believed AI had made them 20% more productive. The difference in perception and reality was on average 40 percentage points.
- jama211 1y agoThe devil is always in the details with these studies. What did they measure, how did they measure it, are they counting learning the new tool as unproductive time, etc etc etc. I’ll have to read them myself. Regardless, I’ll be sad if it makes most people less productive on average if that’s the scientific truth, but it won’t change the fact that for my specific use case there is a clear time save.
- 1y ago