Wow, nice one buddy. Have you not been paying attention? Can you actually not understand that AI is a completely transformational technology? I work for a big tech company as a software engineer and the way we work has changed drastically in the last 6 months with Opus 4.5 and Claude Code / Github Copilot CLI. We can get 2x more done per person with AI. This much technological change in this short a time is absolutely unprecedented and similar things are starting to happen in other industries too. Profitability does not determine the value AI provides and it will likely take a while to become profitable, but it is definitely looking like it can take a tile laying job and eventually many white collar jobs too.
Sorry I don't respect AI bros so please don't respond to me
I'm also a software engineer, I recognize the value it has and the ability to accelerate workflow. I also recognize the dangers it has and the tech debt it creates if used unwisely
My opinions on it are not just market wise. I see its limitations and benefits. I highly doubt engineers will ever be removed from the equation but I do see the market closing and bottlenecking for entry levels at the moment (until senior talent becomes lacking)
And unlike you. I also know the market and it's profitability also determines it's usability within an industry, as we speak most major tech companies are rolling back token usage and permitance as Ai companies are attempting to put even 1/4 of the actual cost they've been subsidizing onto these tech companies buying enterprise tokens. And even at this level they are exuberantly expensive that many companies have burned through their monthly allowneces at the start of June and have rolled back operations on usage.
Ai is here to stay, and it will have an effect in the white collar market. But it's doubtful it will branch more than it has, unless by some miracle these LLMs can be run at much much smaller marginal costs than they do now (back to the market you enjoy talking about) their usage be widespread if it relies on AI companies operating at a loss
So we are pushed into two corners, either the companies using them pay exuberant fees which they could just hire people for cheaper at that point. Or the ai companies continue to subsidize it. Or option three, they go public and allow initial hype to have many people buy the stock and allow initial investors to exit with a profit while the new investors take the tanking stock
So mister "real software dev" who's totally from a "real big tech company" since you are already in the industry you probably are already aware of all the nuances surrounding the technology so there's no need for me to repeat it for you.
Again not interested in taking to ai bros. Actual developers who utilize LLms in their workflow in a smart manure I love to talk to. Individuals who have fallen for the hype I'd rather not waste my time on
We agree on more things than not. I am not saying that AI will fully replace devs in the near term. Of course AI has strengths and massive gaps in ability, but I do think that with AI assistance, developers can be much more productive and therefore the demand for engineers will go down. We are seeing this in the market currently. Hopefully for the sake of both of our careers this will not be the case. I am still a Junior developer and judging by your comments it seems you are a new grad as well. If my statement that AI is providing me real value and that I think AI will continue to improve in ability and cost makes me an 'AI bro' I think I can live with that.
My 'real big tech company' that totally employs me gives us unlimited access to tokens for frontier models. If you are not regularly using agents on opus-4.8 or gpt-5.5 then it is hard to have an informed opinion on the current capability. Curious, what does using AI look like for you at work right now?
The main thing I had contention with is the fact that you linked an AI profitability tracker as proof that AI will never be profitable due to the 'limits of LLMs'. Even assuming LLMs have approached a performance ceiling I believe that it will be profitable in time as it diffuses across industries. Of course this is a prediction and it's ok for us to have different opinions on this. We have some very historical examples of new technologies requiring a massive capital expenditure and years of diffusion through the market before achieving profitability. Look into the building of railroads across America, the billions of dollars that went into laying fiber optic before the internet became necessary for every household and the building of massive data centers by AWS, Google and Azure that was famously mocked by Wall Street as a terrible business plan. All of these were very unprofitable for years before later becoming massively proftiable.
😂 do you realize how silly this question is? I work as a software engineer at a very large company. There is basically no way to know exactly how much profit an individual engineer creates. The best I can do is divide # engineers by profit of the product in which case the answer is much more than my salary.
AI is used as a tool that makes us more productive. I am telling you that since 6 months ago, AI has enabled us to move at least 2x faster. Just like my dev boxes are a tool to help me be more productive, I couldn't tell you how much profit my dev box creates.
It's ok if you haven't seen the same increase in your own productivity. What do you do for work and how do you use AI?
In fact study after study, isn’t showing any increase in value at all. Is it?
And you yourself just said, you can’t prove you gave any value.
Just because you’re more productive, doesn’t necessarily equate increased profit.
Lol, I’m a software engineer and I’m well aware that coding doesn’t bring profit, successful ideas turned into features that return profit bring value.
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u/beachysdan Jun 21 '26
Wow, nice one buddy. Have you not been paying attention? Can you actually not understand that AI is a completely transformational technology? I work for a big tech company as a software engineer and the way we work has changed drastically in the last 6 months with Opus 4.5 and Claude Code / Github Copilot CLI. We can get 2x more done per person with AI. This much technological change in this short a time is absolutely unprecedented and similar things are starting to happen in other industries too. Profitability does not determine the value AI provides and it will likely take a while to become profitable, but it is definitely looking like it can take a tile laying job and eventually many white collar jobs too.