The Velocity Illusion
Senior engineers are 20% slower with AI on complex tasks. Junior engineers are faster but produce code they cannot explain. Speed increased. Understanding collapsed.
A Wipro delivery head coined a term that names what we all feel but cannot articulate: the Illusion of Velocity.
AI generates code faster than humans. Developers ship features sooner. Dashboards show increased output. Everyone celebrates.
Then someone needs to modify that code six months later. They cannot. The original developer cannot explain what was generated. The AI has no memory of the decision. The context has rotted.
The speed was real. The comprehension was synthetic.
When we confuse output volume for forward progress, we are not building faster. We are accumulating debt faster.
Velocity without understanding is not speed. It is entropy with better metrics.