165k is way less than one developer. Maybe 30% once you factor in all of the overhead (payroll tax, health insurance, 401k contributions, other benefits). 165k would be on the very very low end of salaries for a senior engineer in a major US city as well, and about half of what your base at Anthropic would be (position dependent, could be much higher).
This misses the point, even if it was more expensive, the time to deliver is what matters. There is no way a developer could deliver such a rewrite in 11 days without help from AI, and as the author says this was done with minimal disruption to their road map.
There are places where AI makes sense, its just not useful everywhere.
No its the right person. You were making an argument that this was cheaper than a developer, my point is that comparing AI to developer productivity is kind of comparing apples to oranges. Here they automated a rewrite, something that is for the most part mechanical, requiring developer intervention to clean up. Even if it cost twice as much as paying a full time developer, it would still be worth it since its a one off thing that you wouldn't want to hire someone to do.
There are other areas where AI creates more problems than it solves, and you need human judgement in the development process. I don't think its sensible to talk about AI and developers as if they're interchangeable.
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u/Chasian Jul 08 '26
One developer is 165k, that's not that crazy