alt Hacker NewsI get that it’s not nothing, but from personal experience it makes me just so much faster.
I’m basically replicating myself multiple times for a ~10% salary surcharge.
In my mind it’s impossible to not see it that way, unless you just want to capture the subsidy surplus for free.
In the last 30 days my LLM spend, if paid at API rates, would be $19,431 (and that doesn't track online chats or my Github Action reviews). Now I wish I was making $200K/mo but I'm not, no where close. I got all that for $220 on subscriptions.
Yes, LLMs are awesome and let me do things faster but I would be using them far less if my only option was the API. I used coding agents prior to subscriptions (Aider) and spent <$200 total before abandoning it due to cost. The results were good, but not worth the price for me.