The hidden leverage gap
The leverage gap between a skilled developer with AI and one without is already enormous, compounding fast, and largely invisible to enterprise leadership. As inference costs continue to fall, the gap widens. The shape of the divergence is not primarily a talent gap. It is a leverage gap, and most organizations are not measuring it.
The gap is not uniform. Teams that have learned to review, constrain, and compose AI-assisted delivery compound at rates teams running conventional processes cannot match. The competitive divergence is already underway. The question is whether leadership can see it before it becomes structural.
Leadership needs a leverage audit, not only an AI adoption survey. The question is not "are we using AI?" It is "are we capturing the available leverage, and do we have the operating model to make it compound?"