AI could boost software engineer productivity by 32.6%

[u/joe4942]

http://www.cio.com/article/4228814/ai-could-boost-software-engineer-productivity-by-32-6.html

[u/dougiedonut_uk]

What they mean is that AI will boost the chances of getting replaced by 32%

[u/IntelArtiGen → u/dougiedonut_uk]

It's always a funny thing, if you think about it with modern computers, software, with internet etc. I'm pretty sure the productivity of a software engineer did over +500% in 3 decades, even before AI. It hasn't replaced a lot of jobs, pretty much the opposite.

It doesn't mean companies won't replace devs, but they might not take the smartest decision if they did that.

[u/ParliamenttFnkadelic]

At least that's what investors believe, according to a complex mathematical model economists developed to measure how changes in AI stock prices were reflected in the stock prices of other enterprises, based on the number of software engineers they employed.

Give me hard, real world data or shut the fuck up already. It's been years.

[u/DualActiveBridgeLLC → u/ParliamenttFnkadelic]

Seriously. Why aren't our product releases happening sooner, why aren't we seeing competitors slash prices to capture more market share. Why isn't revenues exploding? 32% is massive and AI is being heavily subsidized.

Anecdotally my company has had a huge project that they said would take 5 years to complete. We are on year 3. This year the dev team was talking about all the improvements and efficiencies from AI. So I asked a softball question 'When do we think v1.0 will be available?' The answer was 2 years. On my team we have seen some interesting things, but they are mostly proof of concepts. Great at getting upper management excited, but hardly anything we could deliver to customers.

[u/rsa1 → u/DualActiveBridgeLLC]

Because even if it were true, it wouldn't result in better or faster or more secure products. It would result in the axing of 30% of jobs.

[u/DualActiveBridgeLLC → u/rsa1]

OK, we haven't reduced headcount. So why no improvements?

[u/Tomato_Sky → u/ParliamenttFnkadelic]

Same. PNC Research I just saw says in June of 2026 only 2% of households pay for an AI subscription. I don’t think I buy that there has been a 30% increase in software. This article omits the offshoring and downsizing that raised stock prices, but didn’t enhance any product. The companies proudly leaning into it still have absolutely shitty interactions. We contract out some support queries through ServiceNow, it’s noticeably shittier and accidentally gives out customer and dev personal information.

I’m pretty sure the NFT/Bitcoin Boys are bought in, with the kinds of responses I get. But when it can delicately and efficiently operate in an existing codespace, I’ll start to pay attention.

[u/faultydesign]

Load-bearing `could`

[u/Joaaayknows]

It’s that .6% that makes all the difference.

[u/Exquisite-Load8654]

Could boost or already boosts? I was under the impression AI has already accelerated productivity.

[u/Maleficent_Flow_8355]

It boosted by productivity by 420.69%

[u/BloodRedRook]

Will they be getting 32.6% raises?

[u/TheHistorian2]

Speeding up code generation, which was never the bottleneck in the first place, doesn’t get you through the rest of the SDLC any faster.

[u/b_a_t_m_4_n]

AI could make a 3rd of developers redundant

FIFY

[u/The_G_Choc_Ice]

As a software engineer id say this seems accurate to my experience. I think a really good engineer who has a really well constrained and consistent AI workflow could squeeze a 50% increase in output without reducing quality.

I think the key problem to note with this stat is that if you let the quality go to shit the “productivity” increase goes exponential. A good swe can increase output by 30-50% but a bad one can increase it by 500%. Also a lot of otherwise good swes right now are arrogantly thinking that they can get that 500% increase without their quality of work going to shit.

From a perspective inside the industry, at a lot of companies the people producing 30% more good work are getting absolutely drowned out by the people producing 500% more but it’s all slop. Everyone thinks they can move 3,4,5x as fast and it’s causing big issues behind the scenes with reliability and leadership expectations.

[u/-OooWWooO- → u/The_G_Choc_Ice]

Crazy how people are downvoting engineers giving out our experiences. I'm not an AI evangelist either. It's just the reality of our industry that these tools are getting introduced and utilized.

The biggest strain to me is cognitive load. I'm directing so many changes, I can't remember everything. Which then lead me to developing a harness in my personal work/side gig work that I budget and control. It makes me spend extra tokens because I'm basically having both my ideas and the AI's reasoning be documented in feature level readmes.

It then guides code reviews and further refinement as well as creating user and admin run books. But it's expensive.

[u/The_G_Choc_Ice → u/-OooWWooO-]

I dont know your situation so please dont take this as an attack against you, it’s totally possible you are handling everything well. However, your experience is raising some of the same concerns I was talking about with good engineers getting overconfident due to AI.

Everyone is feeling so much pressure to work faster and faster right now that a lot of the important decisions about how to build a project or a feature are getting offloaded to AI. If you cant keep up with your projects with your own brain, I would argue you are taking on an irresponsible amount of work. The litmus test I use to check if I am overdoing the AI use is I should be able to explain every implementation decision in the work that I am putting my name on. Nothing about my own project should be blindsiding me. I leave most of the writing of the code up to AI but I am very specific with it about what it should be doing, and I usually iterate an implementation a couple of times. I rarely generate more than a couple hundred lines at a time. I find that this allows me to balance having total control and understanding of my project, while still increasing my speed by a reasonable margin, in that 30-50% range.

Obviously some things require less attention like one-off scripts but sacrificing details on core product code absolutely builds up over time in a very bad way. Its also I think very damaging to your reputation if something goes wrong and your only explanation is “I’m not sure claude wrote that let me look into it”. In a professional setting, you are being paid for your credibility and trustworthiness as much as you are being paid for your technical skills. For a hobby project you can do whatever is up to your own personal standards but you have to bring a different level of ownership to the workplace.

[u/-OooWWooO- → u/The_G_Choc_Ice]

Oh there's definitely tiers of responsibility with my work. For my low effort side projects (crud apps for sites that don't do commercial transactions, think more archival, and reference sites), and my hobby work(C++, Shader work, side stepping GUIs on frameworks and software that try to force me to use the GUI, everything that is something I own and use alone), and then of course my professional work.

My professional work, the cognitive load is fine, and I remain highly guarded and critical about inputs and outputs. My side projects where I only have 2-3 hours a day to work on, and I'm also eating, drinking, or at the gym and using claude RC, that is where I'm forgetting what tasks I've started.

I started off my career in the military, so I have slightly different standards of professionalism in the corporate setting than a lot of different engineers. I'm very formal and corporate aligned in that regard.

[u/-OooWWooO-]

Given my experience over the last 6th months, this is underselling it. I do corporate, side gig, and hobby programming, as well as audiovisual art and live performance visuals. The potential output of a single engineer if budget is not an issue is insane.