Regardless of that, LLMs could be a Moloch problem.

That is, if anyone uses it your life will be worse, but if you don't use it then your life will be even worse than those using it.

Too bad you programmers didn't unionize when you had the chance so you could fight this. Guess you'll have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

>Are the people leveraging LLMs making more money while working the same number of hours?

Nobody is getting a raise for using AI. So no.

>Are the people leveraging LLMs working fewer hours while making the same amount of money?

Early adopters maybe, as they offload some work to agents. As AI commodifies and is the baseline, that will invert, especially as companies shed people to have the remaining "multiply" their output with AI.

So the answer will be no and no.

> Are the people leveraging LLMs making more money while working the same number of hours?

> Are the people leveraging LLMs working fewer hours while making the same amount of money?

Yes, absolutely. Mostly because being able to leverage LLMs effectively (which is not "vibe coding" and requires both knowing what you're doing and having at least some hunch of how the LLM is going to model your problem, whether it's been given the right data, directed properly, etc.) is a rare skill.

Did high-level languages and compilers make life better for working programmers? Is it even a meaningful question to ask? Like what would we change depending on the outcome?

Of course not. In the world of capitalism and employment, money earned is not a function of productivity, it is a function of competency. It is all relative.

Lines of code are not a good metric for productivity.

Neither are the hours worked.

Nor is the money.

Just think of the security guard on site walking around, or someone who has a dozen monitors.