The Pronouncement Tracker
Bold predictions about the death of software engineering — and how they're aging.
Predictions are paraphrased from public statements and may misrepresent intent. Spotted an error or a pronouncement we missed? Let us know. (opens in a new tab)
List last updated
- Jensen HuangCEO, NVIDIA
NVIDIA's software engineers would rather build AI agents than write Python, because hands-on coding has been reduced to typing while agents, benchmarks and guardrails are the real work.
Said - Elon MuskCEO, Tesla / xAI
By the end of 2026, human coding will be obsolete because AI will skip programming languages entirely and emit optimised binaries directly from natural-language outcomes.
SaidDeadline - Marc BenioffCEO, Salesforce
Salesforce engineering headcount has stayed roughly flat at ~15,000 for two years because AI coding agents have absorbed the productivity gains; sales is now the only department still expanding.
Said - Sundar PichaiCEO, Alphabet / Google
Three quarters of all new code at Google is now AI-generated and merely approved by engineers, up from about half the previous autumn.
Said - Larry EllisonCo-founder & CTO, Oracle
Oracle's code is now being written by AI models rather than by Oracle developers, who instead describe desired outcomes for AI to implement.
Said - Boris ChernyHead of Claude Code, Anthropic
By the end of 2026, the title software engineer will start to disappear — replaced by builder, as everyone becomes a product manager who codes.
SaidDeadline - Mustafa SuleymanCEO, Microsoft AI
AI will reach human-level performance on most or all professional white-collar tasks, including software engineering, within 18 months.
SaidDeadline - Dario AmodeiCEO, Anthropic
Within a year or two, models may be able to do software engineering end-to-end — setting technical direction and understanding the context of the problem, not just writing the code.
SaidDeadline - Dario AmodeiCEO, Anthropic
AI models will be able to do most — possibly all — of what software engineers currently do within 6 to 12 months.
SaidDeadline - Masayoshi SonChairman & CEO, SoftBank Group
The era of humans writing programs is already ending inside SoftBank, where the stated aim is for AI agents — roughly a thousand per employee — to take over coding entirely.
Said - Vinod KhoslaFounder, Khosla Ventures
Within five years, AI will be able to do 80% of any economically valuable job humans can do, software engineering included.
SaidDeadline - Andy JassyCEO, Amazon
Generative AI and agents will reduce Amazon's corporate workforce in the next few years as software development and other rote work gets automated.
SaidDeadline - Satya NadellaCEO, Microsoft
Between 20% and 30% of code in Microsoft's repositories is now written by AI rather than humans.
Said - Eric SchmidtFormer CEO, Google
Within one year, the vast majority of programmers will be replaced by AI programmers.
SaidDeadline - Tobi LütkeCEO, Shopify
Before any new headcount or resources are approved, teams must demonstrate why their work cannot be done by AI — making AI usage a baseline expectation.
Said - Kevin ScottCTO, Microsoft
95% of all code will be AI-generated within five years.
SaidDeadline - Chamath PalihapitiyaFounder & CEO, Social Capital
The engineer's role will be supervisory at best within 18 months; tools built for engineers will be roadkill on the model-makers' roadmap.
SaidDeadline - Dario AmodeiCEO, Anthropic
AI will be writing 90% of all code within 3–6 months, and essentially all code within 12 months.
SaidDeadlineLater softenedSaid the 90% figure was about lines of code rather than headcount, called reading it as 90% fewer software engineers a completely different claim, and put the real speedup from coding models at 15–20%.
- Jared FriedmanManaging Partner, Y Combinator
Roughly a quarter of YC's Winter 2025 startup batch have codebases that are 95% AI-generated.
Said - Mark ZuckerbergCEO, Meta
In 2025, Meta and other AI labs will have models that effectively function as mid-level engineers writing production code.
SaidDeadlineLater softenedTold staff that agentic development over the previous four months had not accelerated the way Meta expected, retreating from the optimism leadership held earlier in the year.
- Marc BenioffCEO, Salesforce
Salesforce will hire zero new software engineers in 2025 because AI agents have absorbed the productivity gains.
SaidDeadline - Sundar PichaiCEO, Alphabet / Google
More than a quarter of all new code at Google is now generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers.
Said - Elon MuskCEO, Tesla / xAI
AI smarter than the smartest human will arrive around the end of next year (2025).
SaidDeadline - Jensen HuangCEO, NVIDIA
Children should no longer be encouraged to learn to code — AI has made programming a solved problem and humans should specialise in domain expertise instead.
Said - Emad MostaqueThen-CEO, Stability AI
There will be no human programmers in five years.
SaidDeadline
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