Over the past few years, there has been a paradigm shift in how we approach work with the rapid emergence of generative AI. Last year, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang indicated the software engineering might be dead with the prevalence of AI.
While coding seems like a lucrative career path to explore, Huang encourages the youth to explore other fields, including biology, education, manufacturing, or farming.
Instagram’s co-founder Mike Krieger seemingly shares the same sentiments. While speaking in a recent podcast interview, the now-Anthropic Chief Product Officer revealed that the role of software engineers is rapidly evolving and that they’d soon start double-checking AI-generated code rather than writing it (via Business Insider).
Interestingly, Krieger’s perspective on the topic doesn’t categorically indicate that AI will completely take over coding jobs. Instead, repetitive and mundane tasks will be delegated to AI, as software engineers channel their expertise to more sensitive tasks that AI might not necessarily have the capability to handle.
That’s what I think the work looks like three years from now. It’s coming up with the right ideas, doing the right user interaction design, figuring out how to delegate work correctly, and then figuring out how to review things at scale — and that’s probably some combination of maybe a comeback of some static analysis or maybe AI-driven analysis tools of what was actually produced.
Anthropic CPO, Mike Krieger
Even Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman says the rapid emergence and adoption of AI may force software developers to stop coding, forcing them to upskill in the field to gain new skills.
According to Garman:
“If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can’t exactly predict where it is — it’s possible that most developers are not coding.”
Tech brands are pondering software roles
We’ve seen companies like Salesforce and Meta share interesting software development strategies. For instance, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff indicated that the company is seriously debating hiring software engineers in 2025.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemingly echoed Benioff’s sentiments, claiming mid-level AI engineers might claim coding jobs from professionals at Meta in 2025.
On the contrary, Microsoft’s Work Trend Index report indicated that AI isn’t claiming jobs from professionals at all. Instead, executives have raised concerns, indicating an insufficiency of talent to fill vacancies at their firms.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft is recruiting employees with an AI aptitude, prompting a “142x increase in LinkedIn members adding AI skills like Copilot and ChatGPT to their profiles.”
More recently, Google co-founder Sergey Brin claims that working 60-hour weeks is the “sweet spot of productivity” for Google engineers building AI models, that may potentially steal software engineering jobs.
However, multiple reports suggest AI might be a fad, and no one is actually using AI tools daily. Another even hints that 30% of AI-themed projects will be abandoned by 2025 after proof of concept.
Still, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes AI will replace humans for most things, but certain aspects of life will be preserved exclusively for humans to maintain authenticity. Interestingly, Gates previously expressed concerns, indicating AI might claim his job, too.
One of our readers reached out following my coverage and the high affinity of AI to render certain professions redundant. They’re a software engineer who shared the above YouTube video comparing different AI models’ performance while coding, including DeepSeek, OpenAI’s o1, and 03 reasoning models.
“Spoiler: All models get through the initial levels, but can’t move past the basic levels.”
It’s still an interesting and unpredictable time, but AI certainly feels like more than a “fad” at this point.
