We believe that means that we should update how we talk about (and measure) success when using these tools, and we should expect that after the initial efficiency gains our focus will be on raising the ceiling of the work and outcomes we can accomplish, which is a very different way of interpreting tool investments. This helps explain the – perhaps unintuitive at first – observation that many of the developers we interviewed were paying for top-tier subscriptions. When you move from thinking about reducing effort to expanding scope, only the most advanced agentic capabilities will do.

Developers, Reinvented