It's possible they aren't talking about code at all.

"This team member, and this other team member are both filing a particular kind of report but are doing so in very different ways, is one of them more effecient?"

I like it. Seems like there could be lots of ways to automate the creation of SOP for many businesses. I do wonder how high level of tasks it could pick up on. Though maybe that gets better with a bigger context window.

That's fair. Assumption on my part. Hence couched in "is it possible..." weasel words.

This is exactly it! I'm sure I do a lot of things slower than others as well, and simply never came across an "alternative, but faster" method.

Hm, if you mean software design patterns, then not exactly. It's probably harder to detect in just coding world, but the easiest one I can think of in our realm "checking current CPU usage of X service". In my current company, there are quite a few ways - logging into AWS -> switching to production environment -> going to ECS -> Looking up the service -> Clicking on metrics, or opening DataDog -> Dashboards -> Service Name.

I understand it's very reductive and simplified, but for every task there are alternative ways to reach the goal, and from my historical experience, everyone does everything differently. Some things can be optimized significantly, if others just knew about the possibilities.