AI made senior devs 19% slower. They swore it made them faster.
Take a moment to let that satisfying contradiction sink in.
A recent study discovered that experienced developers using AI coding tools took 19% longer to complete tasks. And get this: Those developers also self-reported a 20% higher productivity rate. That’s not a small difference in perception. That’s a full-on reality warp.
The Confidence Trap
I understand. Copilot writes your function. The chat outputs a regex your brain didn't feel like working on. It almost feels like cheating.
However, thinking that you are fast and actually being fast are not the same. This is particularly dangerous for senior engineers. Because nobody questions the person in the room who's been shipping code for a decade.
Where the Time Actually Goes
The debate around this study keeps circling back to the same thing: verification and debugging overhead.
I can give you my perspective:
→ AI generates code that looks right but carries subtle bugs.
→ Senior devs spend time reviewing, testing, and fixing that output.
→ The generation felt instant, so the brain logs it as "fast."
→ The cleanup gets mentally filed under "normal debugging."
You may not be aware of the toll because it is distributed over many micro-moments. Renaming a variable in this place. Mistakes in an edge case there. It's an off-by-one error that you've noticed just before pushing. None of this seems to be the fault of the AI. But it's accumulating.
Why Seniors Get Hit Hardest
This may seem counterintuitive. One would assume that junior developers would have more difficulty with AI-generated code. However, seniors are more susceptible to a specific threat: they are overly confident in their ability to assess the code.
A junior dev might paste AI output and run tests because they're unsure. A senior dev reads the output, thinks "yeah, that's roughly what I'd write," and moves on. The confidence that makes them great engineers becomes the exact thing that lets bad code slip through.
It's like giving a seasoned driver a car with a slightly delayed steering wheel. They'll compensate without noticing. They'll arrive late and blame traffic. 🚗
The Real Problem Isn't Speed
To be honest, being 19% slower may not be significant for the majority of teams. The fact that a feature is shipped on Thursday instead of Wednesday hardly ever destroys a company.
The real problem is the false signal. If your entire team believes they're 20% more productive, that belief shapes hiring plans, sprint commitments, and deadline promises. You're making decisions based on vibes that directly contradict the data.
This issue cannot be solved with tools. It's a risk within the organization. 😬
What I'm Doing About It
I don't hate AI tools. In fact, I use them every day. But I've started treating them the way I treat Stack Overflow answers from 2014 — useful starting points that I never trust without verification.
A few things that help:
→ Time yourself occasionally. Not obsessively. Just enough to check your assumptions.
→ Track rework. If you're fixing AI-generated code more than you expect, the "productivity" is a mirage.
→ Be honest about the assist. When AI writes a block, mentally flag it as unreviewed. Don't let familiarity substitute for verification.
All of these suggestions are simple, basic ideas. It's the follow-through that's hard. The kind that's easy to skip when a tool is whispering "you're so fast now" in your ear.
The Takeaway
AI coding tools are powerful. They're also flattering. And flattery is the one thing experienced engineers aren't trained to defend against. The 19% slowdown isn't the scary number here. The 20% false confidence is.
So here's my question for you: Have you ever measured whether AI tools actually make you faster — or are you going off how it feels? I’d really appreciate an honest answer. 👇
