AI Productivity Gains Are Banked by the People, Not the Company

A recent study looked at productivity gains from GitHub Copilot for Okta’s software engineers. The study found “no statistically significant improvement” when it came to quantifiable organizational productivity throughput – but engineers reported cutting their workweek from about 45 to 41 hours. The hangup can be summarized in these two sentences from the study: “Achieving organizational productivity gains requires more than deploying an AI-powered tool. It demands a deliberate effort to learn, adapt, and reinvent teams, processes, and infrastructure to align with AI-augmented developer capabilities.” Individual productivity gains don’t move the needle on the company level, as communication, waiting on decisions, and process time don’t move – AI requires organizational change to be effective.