Takes more than 'just use AI' to build software

Developer frustrations with AI mandates often surface due to their being handed down by company leaders who don’t have close visibility into engineering workflows. Developers describe executives instituting OKRs and tracking AI usage without any regard for whether it’s actually helping, let alone where it may be making things worse. Code acceptance rate (how often developers accept the code suggestions an AI tool makes) is a popular adoption metric, but some argue it’s a poor measure because it counts people accepting suggestions that may be problematic.

Definately agree that the use of lines/suggestions accepted is a terrible metric. But here we are. There is some serious disconnect between marketed productivity improvements (up to 100%!) and reality (more like 2-10%).

_{Quote Citation: Sage Lazzaro, “AI coding mandates are driving developers to the brink”, April 08, 2025, https://leaddev.com/culture/ai-coding-mandates-are-driving-developers-to-the-brink}