How much does Dimitri say AI actually boosts engineering team productivity?

Dimitri, an AI consultant, told Steve Huynh on A Life Engineered that his best estimate for sophisticated teams is roughly a 20% improvement in economic value. He measures it by watching a team of five to ten engineers for six months with AI and comparing the result with what it would have produced without it. He says he has not seen any team produce ten times the value.

Dimitri says the estimate comes from informal studies with clients, about three to five businesses a year, so it is not a large sample.
Dimitri says he has not seen an app that is excellent and was only possible with AI, nor one built at 10% of the usual cost or time.

▸In their words

“My best estimate for sophisticated teams is that that economic value estimate improvement is in the ballpark of 20%.” Dimitri · at 31:17 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on A Life Engineered (2026-10-19). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode

Q2Would teams rather have four engineers plus AI or five engineers, according to Dimitri?Q3Does Dimitri think junior engineers still need to learn data structures and algorithms with AI?Q4How does Dimitri say engineers can stay more useful than AI to their managers?Q5What are mid-career engineers doing about AI, according to Dimitri?Q6Why haven't we seen an explosion of AI-built apps, according to Steve Huynh and Dimitri?Q7What do Steve Huynh and Dimitri think is behind the Meta layoffs?Q8Does Dimitri think using AI agents to clear old backlogs creates real value?

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