[kibwen]

Talking about "productivity" is a red herring.

Are the people leveraging LLMs making more money while working the same number of hours?

Are the people leveraging LLMs working fewer hours while making the same amount of money?

If neither of these are true, then LLMs have not made your life better as a working programmer.

[pixl97]

Regardless of that, LLMs could be a Moloch problem.

That is, if anyone uses it your life will be worse, but if you don't use it then your life will be even worse than those using it.

Too bad you programmers didn't unionize when you had the chance so you could fight this. Guess you'll have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

[danaris]

Well, at least thus far, the only reason my life is worse due to AI is because of all the people who won't stop talking about how amazing it is for vibe-coding everything from scratch despite ample empirical evidence to the contrary.

Until and unless there are some more significant improvements in how it works with regard to creating code, having strong "manual" programming skills is still paramount.

[shinryuu]

Classical prisoner's dilemma.

[MattDamonSpace]

Thank god there’s no programmers union ffs

[coldtea]

>Are the people leveraging LLMs making more money while working the same number of hours?

Nobody is getting a raise for using AI. So no.

>Are the people leveraging LLMs working fewer hours while making the same amount of money?

Early adopters maybe, as they offload some work to agents. As AI commodifies and is the baseline, that will invert, especially as companies shed people to have the remaining "multiply" their output with AI.

So the answer will be no and no.

[Spivak]

Well they don't call it being a wage slave for nothing. You aren't getting a raise because you're still selling the same 40-60 hours of your time. If the business is getting productivity wins they'll buy less time via layoffs.

(USSR National Anthem plays) But if you owned the means of production and kept the fruits of your labor, say as a founder or as a sole proprietor side hustle, then it's possible those productivity gains do translate into real time gains on your part.

[coldtea]

>But if you owned the means of production and kept the fruits of your labor, say as a founder or as a sole proprietor side hustle, then it's possible those productivity gains do translate into real time gains on your part.

Not even then: since it will commodify your field, and make any rando able to replicate it.

[_DeadFred_]

The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism.

--Theodore Roosevelt

[nico_h]

What about coops? Or partnerships?

[suttontom]

At some FAANG companies, using AI is now part of the role profile against which your performance and compensation is assessed. So, yes, some engineers are technically getting a raise for using AI.

[nradov]

Did high-level languages and compilers make life better for working programmers? Is it even a meaningful question to ask? Like what would we change depending on the outcome?

[Jensson]

Lots of people have jobs today thanks to high level languages that wouldn't have a job before them, they don't need to know how to manage memory manually.

Maybe that will happen for LLM programming as well, but I haven't seen many "vibe coder wanted" job ads yet that doesn't also require regular coding skills, so today LLM coding is just a supplementary skill its not a primary skill, so not like higher level languages since those let you skip a ton of steps.

[wiseowise]

> Did high-level languages and compilers make life better for working programmers

Yes.

[elevatortrim]

Of course not. In the world of capitalism and employment, money earned is not a function of productivity, it is a function of competency. It is all relative.

[nico_h]

Oh you sweet summer child. Under capitalism money is a function of how low you can pay your fungible organic units before they look for other opportunities or worse, unionize (but that can be dealt with relatively easily nowadays). Except for a few exceptional locations and occupations, the scale is tilted waaay against the individual, especially in the land of the free (see H-1B visas, medical debt and workers on food stamps). (See also the record profits or big companies since Covid).

[elevatortrim]

> Oh you sweet summer child.

Let's keep it civil.

> ow low you can pay your fungible organic units before they look for other opportunities or worse

This is what I meant? The more replace-able you are, the lowest you can be paid before you look for other opportunities. And, of course, yes, it is absolutely tilted against the individual.

[athrowaway3z]

Lines of code are not a good metric for productivity.

Neither are the hours worked.

Nor is the money.

Just think of the security guard on site walking around, or someone who has a dozen monitors.

[zozbot234]

> Are the people leveraging LLMs making more money while working the same number of hours?

> Are the people leveraging LLMs working fewer hours while making the same amount of money?

Yes, absolutely. Mostly because being able to leverage LLMs effectively (which is not "vibe coding" and requires both knowing what you're doing and having at least some hunch of how the LLM is going to model your problem, whether it's been given the right data, directed properly, etc.) is a rare skill.

[Jensson]

Can you name an example? Who do you know that made more money by using LLM?