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kokanee • today at 8:24 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

I don't buy the reductio ad absurdum, which hinges on the assertion that some developers are still 10x more productive than others due to differences in their engineering potential. I think that A) however you're measuring productivity is probably not capturing the full story, and B) one of the most important reasons people have differences in productivity is because not everyone puts the same amount of effort in. It's not necessarily because they don't have the ability to stay off of reddit and work longer hours and prompt more furiously, it's because not everyone is equally motivated to do so (hence the entire field of management).

I also don't buy the idea that there is special human stardust that gives us permanent irreplaceable economic value. Even if the tacit knowledge that the current generation of engineers were able to build up in the years prior to ~2025 does give us value that won't be completely replaced for a long time, why would you assume that the delta between what you can do and what claude can do will still be worth $200K in 5 years?