* AI will drive additional features as development accelerates
* There will be a window where fast adopting AI companies can deliver features faster than peers
* Those fast adopting AI companies will be able to garner additional revenue
* Gap closes as AI benefits slow in their impact to feature development and slower adopting companies catch up
* Companies that were faster adopters can no longer charge more for additional revenue without giving up market share to now caught-up competitors
* New normal is that companies are in a bind - they have to pay for tokens/AI aided development else they lose speed and therefore market share - but the paying is now without additional revenue and exists as a tax
Assumptions:
* No AGI
* LLMs have bounded impact on features
* Timeframe is long enough that companies that trail in AI won't be starved out
The variation in individual developer throughput was as much as 20x pre-AI. 10% is basically nothing. You’d be better off firing your worst performer and replacing them with someone good (or great).
Good luck getting those devs. Between the fallout of covid and AI in education, there is likely half an upcoming generation poorly educated and comparatively less qualified.
Right now the market favors employers, but I think when the sobriety sets in this will rapidly change. Senior devs are gonna get more expensive. Companies should massively invest in education programs.
How long it takes for a seasoned developer to write a full app with database design, full authentication register/login/logout/forgot/session, basic crud for all entities, payment processing, admin dashboard with analytics, recent users, transactions, moderation, etc
Usually from 1 to 3 months
Now it all can be developed in just 5 mins, add cosmetic changes in just 24 hours and you have a fully functioning app already deployed in production
So if that doesn't make you a 10X developer you are not using enough AI
> Our team at DX analyzed engineering velocity from November 2024 to February 2026
In my experience Claude Code only really started to be really strong in December 2025 and most people didn’t notice/adopt it until Opus 4.6, which launched in Feb 2026. So I’d expect quite a different result if measure since then.
Everybody have access to the same LLMs. Eventually if everybody is a "Nx engineer" (see PS below), then nobody is. Just a new baseline.
Once you are at this point, you can either invest further in LLMs, marginally increasing "productivity", or invest in people and culture, increasing potential for innovation by bringing in deep domain expertise that is not in any LLM and never will be.
PS: many measure "Nx engineer" by lines of code or number of "features" someone churns out; a better metric would be real world impact. Can I 10x my "made the world a better place" metric with LLMs? Hard to say. Probably not.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 10.0 ms ] threadIf that’s true, AI gives the same gains doubling labour. No?
* AI will drive additional features as development accelerates
* There will be a window where fast adopting AI companies can deliver features faster than peers
* Those fast adopting AI companies will be able to garner additional revenue
* Gap closes as AI benefits slow in their impact to feature development and slower adopting companies catch up
* Companies that were faster adopters can no longer charge more for additional revenue without giving up market share to now caught-up competitors
* New normal is that companies are in a bind - they have to pay for tokens/AI aided development else they lose speed and therefore market share - but the paying is now without additional revenue and exists as a tax
Assumptions:
* No AGI
* LLMs have bounded impact on features
* Timeframe is long enough that companies that trail in AI won't be starved out
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iVHmp9F4Rl0
Right now the market favors employers, but I think when the sobriety sets in this will rapidly change. Senior devs are gonna get more expensive. Companies should massively invest in education programs.
Usually from 1 to 3 months
Now it all can be developed in just 5 mins, add cosmetic changes in just 24 hours and you have a fully functioning app already deployed in production
So if that doesn't make you a 10X developer you are not using enough AI
In my experience Claude Code only really started to be really strong in December 2025 and most people didn’t notice/adopt it until Opus 4.6, which launched in Feb 2026. So I’d expect quite a different result if measure since then.
Everybody have access to the same LLMs. Eventually if everybody is a "Nx engineer" (see PS below), then nobody is. Just a new baseline.
Once you are at this point, you can either invest further in LLMs, marginally increasing "productivity", or invest in people and culture, increasing potential for innovation by bringing in deep domain expertise that is not in any LLM and never will be.
PS: many measure "Nx engineer" by lines of code or number of "features" someone churns out; a better metric would be real world impact. Can I 10x my "made the world a better place" metric with LLMs? Hard to say. Probably not.