The LLM Curve of Impact on Software Engineers
February 12, 2025
There is so much debate online about the usefulness of LLMs. While some people see giant leaps in productivity, others don’t see what the fuss is about. Every relevant HackerNews post now comes with a long thread of folks arguing back and forth. I call it the new Great Divide.
I have a theory about this divide. The theory is that, on average, an LLM’s impact on someone’s day-to-day job largely depends on their level, and it follows a really interesting curve. In this post, I’ll explain the reasoning behind this idea.
There’s little doubt LLM based coding tools will impact software engineering perhaps more than any other field. Just how remains to be seen. Here Sergey Tselovalnikov considers which levels of experience, from junior to staff will be impacted, and how-positively, and less so.
