Recent research reveals a shocking disconnect between perception and reality when it comes to AI coding productivity. A rigorous METR study conducted in 2025 tracked 16 experienced developers from major open-source projects as they completed 246 real-world coding tasks. The results were startling: developers using AI tools experienced a 19% decrease in productivity compared to working without AI assistance.
Even more concerning, the developers themselves were completely unaware of this slowdown. They estimated that AI had increased their productivity by 20%, while the actual data showed the opposite. This represents a massive 39-point gap between perception and reality, suggesting that many glowing reports about AI productivity gains may be fundamentally flawed.
This is great article demonstrating how offloading comprehension and knowledge to AI means when something DOES happen you still end up right where you offloaded. IE back in the code. Now imagine instead of looking at lines of code you wrote, you’re digging through 10 files of 300-500 lines each trying to figure out what went wrong.
James you worry too much. I’ll just have AI figure it out. Right and when it’s solution to a timeout bug is to increase the window to 3 seconds let me know how that goes for you.
Quote Citation: finalroundai.com, “How AI Vibe Coding Is Destroying Junior Developers’ Careers”, Jul 16, 2025, https://www.finalroundai.com/blog/ai-vibe-coding-destroying-junior-developers-careers