I’m also talking about personal use. These are research devices for my PhD. I’m obviously not paying out of pocket, but my funding agency does.

I’m trying to convey that if a tool increases your efficiency by more than it costs then it’s worth paying for it regardless of how expensive it is. It’s how the economy works.

There is no free lunch. Even if a company pays for it instead of you, their LLM costs per developer will be factored in to what they are willing to provide as compensation. So one way or another, the end result is you get paid for less for the same amount of work today.