How Fast Does AI Really Make Developers? The Evidence so far
r/singularity
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Generative AI
People are claiming Software Engineers are moving "100x faster". These numbers are being used to justify laying people off. I wanted to know if any of it holds up. The most rigorous study I found was by METR (independent non-profit, published mid-2025) It had senior engineers working on real open source projects. They were 19% slower with AI than without. The most-cited paper (the GitHub Copilot RCT) has serious problems that rarely get discussed.