| ▲ | Windchaser 3 days ago | |
A back-of-the-napkin estimate of software developer salaries: There are some ~1.5 million software developers in the US per BLS data, or ~4 million if using a broader definition Median salary is $120-140k. Let's say $120k to be conservative. This puts total software developer salaries at $180 billion. So, that puts $1 billion in Claude revenue in perspective; only about 0.5% of software developer salaries. Even if it only improved productivity 5%, it'd be paying for itself handily - which means we can't take the $1 billion in revenues to indicate that it's providing a big boost in productivity. | ||
| ▲ | dmurvihill 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | |
If it makes a 5% improvement, that would make it a $9 billion dollar per year industry. What’s our projected capex for AI projects next five years again? | ||
| ▲ | lovich 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | |
You are ignoring costs The AI companies are currently lighting dollars on fire if you pay them a few pennies to do so. The AI models are actually accomplishing something, but the unit economics aren't there to support it being profitable | ||