Sam Altman Suggests a Dismal Future for Engineers: 'Maybe We Need Fewer'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggests that the AI his company is developing could eventually decrease the demand for software engineers. While not happening immediately, the trend is evident. "For a time, each software engineer will accomplish much more," he explained. "And eventually, yes, we may need fewer software engineers."

In an extensive interview with Stratechery's Ben Thompson, Altman, 39, stated that the tactical advantage used to come from mastering code, but now it’s about mastering AI.

“The obvious tactical thing is just get really good at using AI tools,”Contrasting this with the early 2000s, when the focus was simply on being a skilled coder, Altman emphasized that today, the goal has shifted to mastering AI.

Altman shared that in many companies, "at least half" of the code is already generated by AI. "In many companies, it’s probably over 50% now," he noted, adding that the next major advancement—"agentic coding"—is yet to come.

“The big thing I think will come with agentic coding, which no one's doing for real yet.”

He’s not the only one with this view. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently predicted that AI will write all software code within a year. Similarly, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg shared in January with Joe Rogan that AI will soon be responsible for generating much of the code behind their apps.

Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho, isn’t surprised. In a recent post on X, he wrote, “When people say ‘AI will write 90% of the code’ I readily agree because 90% of what programmers write is ‘boiler plate’.”

He referenced a concept from The Mythical Man-Month, highlighting the difference between "essential complexity" and "accidental complexity."

“AI is doing a great job eliminating accidental complexity. Humans still need to deal with the essential complexity,” Vembu explained.

However, he also pointed out a boundary that AI may not be able to cross: “Can it find totally new patterns?... I don’t know if AI can do this. I don’t know if that can be brute forced.”