5 ms·

> If it was actually productive, then the revenue would increase and affordability wouldn't be a question. Revenue has increased. Have you seen Meta's latest e

> If it was actually productive, then the revenue would increase and affordability wouldn't be a question. Revenue has increased. Have you seen Meta's latest earnings? +33% revenue - in this economy. Affordability is not a question. There is a reason companies like Meta have no issue with their engineers spending $1k/day on tokens. It's just not that much compared to how much they make per employee.

louiereederson 6mo ago
This article is about Uber, not Meta
joshuastuden 6mo ago
How can that be attributed to any code an LLM wrote? >$8 billion of net income was the result of a tax benefit the company realized in the first quarter of the year. So exactly how much of their revenue is because of any code LLMs wrote vs. just structural tail winds?
- solenoid0937 6mo ago
  You can always say "it's not because of LLMs", that's nearly unfalsifiable. But if all of your peers are saying LLMs are more productive, if you're building things faster than ever before, the macro picture speaks for itself.
  - jmcqk6 6mo ago
    It sounds like this has a pretty falsifiable claim here - is the revenue attributed to a tax thing? Then it's clearly not attributable to code. I agree that the macro picture would speak for itself. Can you point to any macro level detail that is indeed cleanly showing benefits from increased productivity from LLMs?
    - solenoid0937 6mo ago
      Not a macro detail, but my peers and I are shipping features at at least 5-10x the speed we used to.
  - joshuastuden 6mo ago
    I'm not asking to say "it's not because of LLMs" I am asking for evidence that LLMs are creating revenue for users.
    - Esophagus4 6mo ago
      I think the lack of evidence for LLM productivity is not an indictment on LLMs… it’s an indictment on the industry still having no real way to measure developer productivity in general.
- scuff3d 6mo ago
  I agree that you can't draw any conclusions about AI, but their revenue increased by 33% percent. That's just straight income before any taxes or costs are applied.
  - ethin 6mo ago
    Yes, but that doesn't mean AI increased their revenue. Is there definitive proof that AI/LLMs caused this increase?
    - scuff3d 6mo ago
      I completely agree with you. I pointed out replying to the same person that in the same report their ad impressions were up 20% and the price per ad was up 12%, which account for a huge amount chunk of that revenue increase. All I was saying here was that tax breaks wouldn't impact revenue since revenue is reported before taxes, operating costs and anything else.
scuff3d 6mo ago
That means absolutely nothing in the context of this conversation. It says right in their release ad impressions are up almost 20% and cost per add is up 12%. Those two metrics alone account for most of the increase in their revenue. Absolutely no conclusion can be drawn regarding the impact of AI on those numbers one way or the other. It's not like they used AI to crank out some new revenue generating piece of software, or massively reduce operating costs. In fact their operating costs rose by 35%.
- solenoid0937 6mo ago
  > It says right in their release ad impressions are up almost 20% and cost per add is up 12% Have you wondered why this is the case? How do you think they increased impressions so much at their scale? How they did this despite losing 20M users? To put it clearly, AI at every part of the pipeline: writing software, product features/experiments, A/B testing them, and pushing them out to users. Even before you get to something like LLM driven recommendations, you can virtually entirely automate the process of finding more "engagement alpha" with AI.
  - scuff3d 6mo ago
    If you have an evidence from their financial releases showing a correlation between AI usage and increased revenue I'd love to see it. Otherwise you're just making wild ass guesses. Edit: Also, historically Meta has been growing revenue by 30 to 50 percent for the last decade. With the only exception being 2022 and 2023. So it's not like recent performance is an outlier.
    - solenoid0937 6mo ago
      Growth is exponentially harder the bigger you get. You can't take previous years as your base case.
      - scuff3d 6mo ago
        So then no, you don't have anything to back the statement and your just guessing wildly. You can just say that.
pjc50 6mo ago
After losing 20 million users? https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-user-decline-ai-investments https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-u... I really don't understand their economics.

louiereederson 6mo ago

This article is about Uber, not Meta

joshuastuden 6mo ago

How can that be attributed to any code an LLM wrote? >$8 billion of net income was the result of a tax benefit the company realized in the first quarter of the year. So exactly how much of their revenue is because of any code LLMs wrote vs. just structural tail winds?

solenoid0937 6mo ago
You can always say "it's not because of LLMs", that's nearly unfalsifiable. But if all of your peers are saying LLMs are more productive, if you're building things faster than ever before, the macro picture speaks for itself.
- jmcqk6 6mo ago
  It sounds like this has a pretty falsifiable claim here - is the revenue attributed to a tax thing? Then it's clearly not attributable to code. I agree that the macro picture would speak for itself. Can you point to any macro level detail that is indeed cleanly showing benefits from increased productivity from LLMs?
  - solenoid0937 6mo ago
    Not a macro detail, but my peers and I are shipping features at at least 5-10x the speed we used to.
- joshuastuden 6mo ago
  I'm not asking to say "it's not because of LLMs" I am asking for evidence that LLMs are creating revenue for users.
  - Esophagus4 6mo ago
    I think the lack of evidence for LLM productivity is not an indictment on LLMs… it’s an indictment on the industry still having no real way to measure developer productivity in general.
scuff3d 6mo ago
I agree that you can't draw any conclusions about AI, but their revenue increased by 33% percent. That's just straight income before any taxes or costs are applied.
- ethin 6mo ago
  Yes, but that doesn't mean AI increased their revenue. Is there definitive proof that AI/LLMs caused this increase?
  - scuff3d 6mo ago
    I completely agree with you. I pointed out replying to the same person that in the same report their ad impressions were up 20% and the price per ad was up 12%, which account for a huge amount chunk of that revenue increase. All I was saying here was that tax breaks wouldn't impact revenue since revenue is reported before taxes, operating costs and anything else.

scuff3d 6mo ago

That means absolutely nothing in the context of this conversation. It says right in their release ad impressions are up almost 20% and cost per add is up 12%. Those two metrics alone account for most of the increase in their revenue. Absolutely no conclusion can be drawn regarding the impact of AI on those numbers one way or the other. It's not like they used AI to crank out some new revenue generating piece of software, or massively reduce operating costs. In fact their operating costs rose by 35%.

solenoid0937 6mo ago
> It says right in their release ad impressions are up almost 20% and cost per add is up 12% Have you wondered why this is the case? How do you think they increased impressions so much at their scale? How they did this despite losing 20M users? To put it clearly, AI at every part of the pipeline: writing software, product features/experiments, A/B testing them, and pushing them out to users. Even before you get to something like LLM driven recommendations, you can virtually entirely automate the process of finding more "engagement alpha" with AI.
- scuff3d 6mo ago
  If you have an evidence from their financial releases showing a correlation between AI usage and increased revenue I'd love to see it. Otherwise you're just making wild ass guesses. Edit: Also, historically Meta has been growing revenue by 30 to 50 percent for the last decade. With the only exception being 2022 and 2023. So it's not like recent performance is an outlier.
  - solenoid0937 6mo ago
    Growth is exponentially harder the bigger you get. You can't take previous years as your base case.
    - scuff3d 6mo ago
      So then no, you don't have anything to back the statement and your just guessing wildly. You can just say that.

pjc50 6mo ago

After losing 20 million users? https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-user-decline-ai-investments https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-u... I really don't understand their economics.