A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

So we’re supposed to start paying $1k-$1,5k on top of already crazy salaries just to maybe get a productivity boost on trivial to semi trivial issues? I know my boss would not be keen on that at least.

And remember. This is on subsadised prices.

I can't use $20 of credit (gpt-5 thinking via intellij's pro AI subscription) a month right now with plenty of usage so I'm surprised at the $1k figure. Is Claude that much more expensive? (a quick Google suggests yes actually).

Having said the above some level of AI spending is the new reality. Your workplace pays for internet right? Probably a really expensive fast corporate grade connection? Well they now also need to pay for an AI subscription. That's just the current reality.

The fast corporate internet connection is probably 1000$ for 100 developers or more...

I don't know what Intellij's AI integration is like, but my brief Claude Code experience is that it really chews through tokens. I think it's a combination of putting a lot of background info into the context, along with a lot of "planning" sort of queries that are fairly invisible to the end user but help with building that background for the ultimate query.

Aider felt similar when I tried it in architect mode; my prompt would be very short and then I'd chew through thousands of tokens while it planned and thought and found relevant code snippets and etc.

It will certainly be interesting to see how businesses evolve in the upcoming years. What is written in stone is, you (employee) will be measured and I am curious to see what developers will be measured by in the future. Will you be at a greater risk of layoffs/lack of promotions/etc. if you spend more on AI? How do you as a developer prove that it is you and not the LLM that should be praised?

Hardware companies routinely license individual EDA tool seats that cost more than numerous developer salaries - $1k/year is nothing if it improves productivity by any measurable amount.

The high salaries make productivity improvements even more important.

The OP was saying it's $1k/mo. That's a 5-10% raise, which is a bit more than nothing.

Paying for Internet is not a great analogy imo. If you don't pay $1k/mo for Internet, you literally can't work.

What happens if you don't pay $1k/mo for Claude? Do you get an appreciable drop in productivity and output?

Genuinely asking.

There are many companies that regularly spend much more than that on other software related licenses that devs need to do their job productively.

If the average US salaried developer is 10-15% more productive for just 1k more a month it is literally a no-brainer for companies to invest in that.

Of course on the other side of the coin there are many companies that are very stingy with paying for literally anything for their employees that could measurably improve productivity, and hamper their ability to be productive by intentionally paying for cheap shitty tools. They will just lose out.

If devs salaries are so crazy its quite the opposite. NOT investing 1-1.5k/mo to improve their productivity by a measurable amount would quite literally be just plain stupid and I would question your boss ability to think critically.

Not to mention - while I know many don't like it, they may be able to achieve enough of a productivity boost to not require hiring as many of those crazy salaried devs.

Its literally a no-brainer. Thinking about it from just the individual cost factor is too simplified a view.

Anthropic and OpenAI both have a high SSO/enterprise tier tax.

Exactly, makes it feel almost like an advertorial for Anthropic, who likely need most customers to pay 1000 bucks a month to break even.

If the world wasnt a garbage hole of mis-alignment and planning : The people seeing positivity out of this stuff would be demanding raises immediately, both AI experts and seniors should be demanding the company pay and train juniors as part of their loyalty commitment to the company

It isn’t a raise. Salaries are on a very different budget. Money is fungible etc but don’t tell accounting.

Parent comment isn't joking. Good simulators for RF stuff can be well over $5k per month.