$18K a year is a fraction of the salary of a junior engineer.
Claude has allowed me to do refactors that would have taken weeks to instead take a couple of days. It has, objectively, increased the velocity of the engineering component of greenfield features by 40% in my org. You can put a number value on that and decide if it gives you favorable ROI.
In the old world, the refactor probably won't happen in the first place, but the effort would be put elsewhere. "Increased velocity of ..
greenfield features" doesn't directly translate to additional revenue, and your number is very questionable in the first place.
Software engineers like to talk as if business and finance are as easy as pushing code out and refactoring. It's not and never has been.
The point of a refactor is for you to think deeply about the code you are responsibility for, so you can make it better (faster, easier to work on, more tests, whatever).
You’ve gotten a result, but without the work that made you valuable, while deskilling yourself.
It’s a lose/lose situation for…I would say anyone employed as an engineer or programmer. I’m not taking responsible for AI output, the same way I won’t try to fix auto-generated code: because you just regenerate it.
The only person that wins here is the person who can pay you less because they don’t need you, they just need another “types computer guy”.
I think this is the part I struggle with. The code I write makes me money or is a way of teaching me something, both of which are reasons that I would write the code regardless.
I don’t think I have any projects in mind that I’d be willing to spend half of a car on that I also wouldn’t have written myself.
Obviously just a personal take though. I’m glad you get the usage you want out of it.
You're a content creator; you define your revenue stream.
Uber engineers do not define their revenue stream; the product leadership team does.
$1500/mo of AI spend by engineers does not equate to revenue. They need to figure out revenue first before zeroing in on AI spend.
$18K a year is a fraction of the salary of a junior engineer.
Claude has allowed me to do refactors that would have taken weeks to instead take a couple of days. It has, objectively, increased the velocity of the engineering component of greenfield features by 40% in my org. You can put a number value on that and decide if it gives you favorable ROI.
$18k a year is near half of my salary as junior verging on senior developer in the conservation field. Not everyone works in FAANG.
In the old world, the refactor probably won't happen in the first place, but the effort would be put elsewhere. "Increased velocity of .. greenfield features" doesn't directly translate to additional revenue, and your number is very questionable in the first place.
Software engineers like to talk as if business and finance are as easy as pushing code out and refactoring. It's not and never has been.
The point of a refactor is for you to think deeply about the code you are responsibility for, so you can make it better (faster, easier to work on, more tests, whatever).
You’ve gotten a result, but without the work that made you valuable, while deskilling yourself.
It’s a lose/lose situation for…I would say anyone employed as an engineer or programmer. I’m not taking responsible for AI output, the same way I won’t try to fix auto-generated code: because you just regenerate it.
The only person that wins here is the person who can pay you less because they don’t need you, they just need another “types computer guy”.
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Can you share some examples that you would say justify that price? Not a gotcha, I’m genuinely curious where you’re seeing a return at that level.
I've written tens of thousands of lines of tested, working code that I would not have written otherwise, and that code is useful to me.
I effectively get to operate at the rate of a small team of engineers - I know that because I've managed small teams of engineers in the past.
> that I would not have written otherwise
I think this is the part I struggle with. The code I write makes me money or is a way of teaching me something, both of which are reasons that I would write the code regardless.
I don’t think I have any projects in mind that I’d be willing to spend half of a car on that I also wouldn’t have written myself.
Obviously just a personal take though. I’m glad you get the usage you want out of it.
2 replies →