> simply because the market has never really punished people for being less efficient at their jobs
In fact, it tends to be the opposite. You being more efficient just means you get "rewarded" with more work, typically without an appropriate increase in pay to match the additional work either.
Especially true in large, non-tech companies/bureaucratic enterprises where you are much better off not making waves, and being deliberately mediocre (assuming you're not a ladder climber and aren't trying to get promoted out of an IC role).
In a big team/org, your personal efficiency is irrelevant. The work can only move as fast as the slowest part of the system.
This is very true. So you can't just ask people to use AI and expect better output even if AI is all the hype. The bottlenecks are not how many lines of code you can produce in a typical big team/company.
I think this means a lot of big businesses are about to get "disrupted" because small teams can become more efficient because for them sheer generation of somtimes boilerplate low quality code is actually a bottleneck.
Sadly capitalism rewards scarcity at a macro level, which in some ways is the opposite of efficiency. It also grants "social status" to the scarce via more resources. As long as you aren't disrupted, and everyone in your industry does the same/colludes, restricting output and working less usually commands more money up to a certain point (prices are set more as a monopoly in these markets). Its just that scarcity was in the past correlated with difficulty which made it "somewhat fair" -> AI changes that.
Its why unions, associations, professional bodies, etc exist for example. This whole thread is an example -> the value gained from efficiency in SWE jobs doesn't seem to be accruing value to the people with SWE skills.
In fact, it tends to be the opposite. You being more efficient just means you get "rewarded" with more work, typically without an appropriate increase in pay to match the additional work either.
Especially true in large, non-tech companies/bureaucratic enterprises where you are much better off not making waves, and being deliberately mediocre (assuming you're not a ladder climber and aren't trying to get promoted out of an IC role).
In a big team/org, your personal efficiency is irrelevant. The work can only move as fast as the slowest part of the system.