DEV Community: VARUN SHUKLA

How Developers in India Are Using AI to Work 3x Faster — And What You Need to Know

VARUN SHUKLA — Fri, 15 May 2026 14:13:05 +0000

The practical AI skills no one teaches in college — and how to advance AI skill the right way in 2025

Picture this. Two developers join the same team on the same day. Same college, same CGPA, same tech stack. Six months later, one is shipping twice as much, writing cleaner documentation, and spending less time on repetitive tasks. The other is still working the way they always have.
The difference is not talent. It is AI fluency.
Across India's tech industry, developers who have taken the time to advance AI skill in a structured way are pulling ahead. Not because AI does their job for them, but because they know exactly how to use it to eliminate the low-value parts of the work and focus on what actually matters.
This post breaks down exactly which AI capabilities are making the biggest difference for developers right now, and how you can get there faster than you think.

The AI Tools Developers Are Actually Using in 2025
The market for AI tools has exploded, but most developers are getting real value from a short list of tools used very well.
ChatGPT — Your On-Demand Technical Collaborator
ChatGPT has moved far beyond "help me write an email." Developers are using it to debug stack traces in seconds, generate boilerplate code on demand, explain unfamiliar frameworks in plain language, write unit tests, and draft API documentation. The developers getting the most out of it are the ones who have learned how to prompt it precisely — giving clear context, specifying what language and version they are using, and asking it to explain its reasoning.
Microsoft Copilot — AI Built Into Your Existing Workflow
For developers working in enterprise environments, Microsoft Copilot is increasingly embedded in the tools they already use. In VS Code it completes code inline. In Microsoft 365 it drafts the specification documents, project updates, and technical proposals that developers often spend hours writing. Teams that have integrated Copilot well report meaningful reductions in the administrative overhead of software projects.
Gemini — Google's Answer to Developer Productivity
Google's Gemini is particularly strong for developers working within the Google Cloud ecosystem. Its deep integration with Google Workspace and its ability to handle very long context windows makes it well-suited for documentation-heavy projects and large system audits.
Notion AI — Where Developers Are Winning on Documentation
Notion AI is rapidly becoming the default tool for developer documentation that does not live in code. Technical roadmaps, sprint retrospectives, architecture decision records, onboarding guides — Notion AI helps teams create and maintain this documentation without it becoming a bottleneck. For developers who hate writing docs, this is the most underrated tool on this list.

The 5 Developer Tasks Where AI Makes the Biggest Difference

Debugging — Paste your stack trace and the relevant code block into ChatGPT or Gemini with a one-line description of what you expected. For errors that would take an hour to trace, AI often identifies the root cause in under a minute.
Writing Tests — Generating unit tests is one of the highest-ROI uses of AI for developers. Describe the function, its expected inputs and outputs, and ask the model to write comprehensive test cases including edge cases.
Code Review Preparation — Before submitting a PR, run your diff through an AI tool and ask it to flag issues. It catches style violations, missing error handling, and security antipatterns that save reviewers' time and improve your reputation.
Technical Documentation — Write the code first, then ask AI to generate docstrings, README sections, and API documentation. Review and correct, but avoid writing from scratch.
Learning New Frameworks — Instead of reading through 200 pages of official documentation, ask ChatGPT to give you the 20% of a framework that covers 80% of real-world use cases. Then dive deep where you actually need to.

Why Most Developers Are Not Getting Full Value From AI — Yet
Many developers use AI tools casually but not strategically. They open ChatGPT when they are stuck and close it when they get an answer. They are leaving most of the value on the table.
The developers who advance AI skill meaningfully are doing something different. They are building consistent habits around AI use. They learn the difference between a vague prompt and a precise one. They know which tool to reach for which task. They understand how to validate AI output critically rather than trusting it blindly.
This is a learnable skill. But like most skills, it is learned much faster with structured guidance than through trial and error alone.

How be10x Helps Developers Advance AI Skill in Just 3 Hours
be10x was founded by Aditya Goenka and Aditya Kachave, both IIT Kharagpur alumni, with a specific goal: give India's working professionals a fast, practical path to real AI fluency. Not theory. Not certification padding. Actual skills that change how you work on Monday morning.
Their live 3-hour workshop, available at just ₹9, covers the AI tools professionals across every function are using right now — ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Canva AI, and Notion AI — with a focus on practical workflows you can implement the same day.
Here is what makes it different from just watching YouTube tutorials:

Live format — You can ask questions, get clarifications, and apply techniques in real time rather than passively watching.
Tools-first curriculum — The workshop is built around the specific tools Indian professionals are using, not generic global examples.
Proven at scale — Over 50,000 professionals have completed be10x training. The platform holds a 4.92 out of 5 rating from participants.
No fluff — Three hours. Real skills. You are not sitting through hour one of a twelve-hour course before you get to anything useful.

For developers specifically, the AI fluency you build in this workshop translates directly into faster debugging, better documentation, more efficient code reviews, and the kind of visible productivity that gets noticed in performance cycles.

The Honest Reality: AI Is Not Optional Anymore
In early 2023, using AI tools as a developer was a nice-to-have. In 2025, not using them is increasingly a disadvantage. Job descriptions at forward-thinking companies now expect AI fluency. Teams that have adopted AI tooling are shipping faster than those that have not. The gap is compounding.
The good news: this is still an early enough moment that building structured AI skill now puts you significantly ahead of the majority of your peers. The developers who advance AI skill deliberately in the next six months will find themselves in a position that would have taken years to build through traditional career progression alone.

Ready to Advance AI Skill? Start With be10x
The be10x ₹9 workshop is the lowest-friction, highest-value way for a working developer in India to build real AI fluency fast. Three hours, live instruction, practical tools, and a peer group of over 50,000 professionals who have already made this leap.
The tools are available to everyone. The skill to use them well is what separates the developers who are thriving in 2025 from those who are wondering why their peers seem to be getting so much more done.
Join the be10x workshop today. Because the best time to advance AI skill was last year. The second best time is right now.

Jobless for 12 Months. Couldn't Clear a Single Round 2. Then I Learned to Pitch AI in Interviews.

VARUN SHUKLA — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:37:44 +0000

10 years in testing. Manual → automation. Java, Selenium, Python, Robot Framework. Lost my job. Applied for 12 months. Zero second-round interviews.

Then: Facebook ad → be10x workshop → Master Course.

What changed wasn't the tools (though those helped). It was learning to PITCH AI in interviews. I walked into my Tech Mahindra interview and explained how AI could be used across the testing lifecycle: test plans, documentation, defect reports, data processing.

The interviewer was visibly impressed. I got hired as a Test Lead. Step UP from my previous role.

The practical stuff that helped day-to-day: presentations that took 3-5 hours now take 10 minutes. Learning new tech that used to require courses takes minutes with AI. Data processing is dramatically faster.

But the real unlock was confidence. 12 months of rejection destroys you mentally. The course showed me I wasn't obsolete. I just needed to update how I work.

If you're in testing/QA and worried about AI replacing you, flip the script. Learn to USE AI in testing. Then interview about it. That's the differentiator.

AMA about the interview strategy.

How I Cut My Report Time by 90% Using AI (and Got a 150% Raise in the Process)

VARUN SHUKLA — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:10:20 +0000

"Hey devs,

Long-time lurker, rare poster. Wanted to share something practical rather than another ""AI will replace us"" doom-scroll.

Quick intro: I'm Krishna Chaitanya, 3.5 years as a Technology Analyst at Infosys, based in Andhra Pradesh. My job is 60% reporting, 30% data pulls, 10% Slack. You know the drill.

Here's the problem I was sitting on for years: one end-to-end report was eating 6 to 10 hours of my day. Data extraction from multiple sources, manual Excel formatting, building visuals, sanity-checking, and finally delivering. Standard tech analyst grind.

The entry point: a ₹9 workshop

Early 2025, Instagram reels kept pushing me content from be10x. You've probably seen them. Two IIT Kharagpur founders, heavy on Excel + AI demos. They run a 3-hour intro workshop for ₹9, which is basically free.

I went in skeptical. Came out paying for the full course that week.

Why? The Power BI live-data demo showed me, unambiguously, that the way I'd been building reports was multiple generations behind what's possible today. It wasn't a marketing reel. It was someone rebuilding, in real-time, the kind of work I was manually stitching together.

What I actually implemented

The course covered:

AI-assisted Excel workflows (automations for data cleanup, lookups, conditional logic)
Power BI dashboards with live data connections
Python for data analytics, specifically pandas + basic scripting for data transformation
Using AI for domain-specific resume alignment and output formatting

The biggest unlock for me wasn't learning new tools. It was learning how to chain AI into existing tools. Excel I already knew. Power BI I'd opened once. Python I'd been avoiding since college. The course stitched them into one coherent workflow.

The measurable result

6-10 hour report → 30 min to 1 hour.

That's roughly a 90% reduction in time-on-task for my main deliverable. I validated this across multiple report types. Consistent.

The side effect I didn't plan for

With the saved time, I rebuilt my resume using AI. Properly. Not ""list every project,"" but actually structured for the job type I wanted. The AI helped me convert responsibility-speak into impact-speak, with domain-aligned keywords.

Submitted. 10 to 15 interview calls came in within weeks. One converted into an offer with a 150% salary hike.

Joining the new company second week of next month.

Why I'm sharing this here

The AI hype cycle is doing a good job of making everyone feel either inadequate or overconfident. Neither helps.

What helped me was a structured, practical, low-ego course that treated AI as a tool to make me better at my existing job. Not a replacement for my brain. Three months later I'm making 2.5x what I was.

If you're sitting on the fence about AI upskilling because you don't know where to start, the ₹9 bar for be10x's workshop is probably the lowest-friction way to test whether the approach clicks for you.

Not sponsored. Just a guy who got a 150% hike and thinks more people should know what worked.

AMA in comments."