Comment by jrlee

We've been building voice AI for 8 years, so I've watched this from both sides - first building AI products, now using AI tools to build faster.

Honestly, the productivity gains feel like a mirage sometimes. Yes, I can prototype features in days instead of weeks now. But getting those prototypes to production quality? Still takes the same amount of time. Real-time voice processing can't have the hallucinations or edge case failures that AI-generated code often has.

The weirdest part is how expectations shifted. When I delivered a feature in 2 weeks before, that was good. Now if I use AI and deliver in 1 week, suddenly 1 week becomes the new baseline for everything. You're not getting ahead - you're just keeping up with inflated expectations.

I've seen the real AI profits go to people who can build complete products solo, not just code faster at their day job. A few engineers I know left big tech to build AI-powered micro-SaaS. They're making $50K/month instead of waiting years for senior staff promotions that might bump them $20K.

But here's the catch - if starting an AI product is 10x easier, so is your competition. We're seeing way more AI startups, but the success rate is about the same. The bottleneck was never "can you build it fast enough" - it was always "do people actually want this."