Despite an increasing feeling of misfortune and sadness in the field, Okta CEO, Todd McKinnon, does not buy the idea that software engineers are going out.
“I laugh just every time I hear about it. All this” we are going to have fewer software engineers “, said McKinnon in an interview with Business Insider. “It’s laughable.”
The CEO of security identity said he thought that the software engineering market will continue to grow in the coming years while the AI revolution will advance.
“In five years, there will be more software engineers than they are now,” said McKinnon.
McKinnon’s comments came because the former career path formerly stable for software engineers has become more and more uncertain, because the AI coding tools have taken control of many responsibilities previously provided by entry -level workers. The quarter of work has led some recent computer graduates to continue the “Panic” master’s programs, while others in the field offer $ 10,000 to those who help them get a job.
McKinnon told Bi that he felt “very confident” of his prospects on software engineering prospects – and he feels this way because it is not the first time that the industry has faced a calculation. McKinnon has declared in each era progress of productivity in the field, from the PC revolution to the rise of mobile devices, the demand for software engineers “continued to increase” as the economy becomes more technologically activated.
Okta CEO stressed that it was not long in tools like compilers, the machine code and the debugging tools did not exist. In 1978, a similar argument could have been advanced when the compilers were released, which are tools that can translate the code into a language that computers can execute.
“You could have said:” Todd, there will be no more software engineers, because the compilers write 100% of the code. General compilers generate each piece of binary code that the computer executes “, said McKinnon.
Instead, software engineers “set up a level” and started writing a syntax that made them more productive, said McKinnon. The CEO said that he predicts that the same thing will happen in the current era and that AI would undertake more “growing work”.
“They will raise a level. They will spend more time thinking, you know, a wider design of systems and how systems interact, and they will be able to solve more complex problems,” said McKinnon.
Those who adhere to the argument that software engineering disappears also seem to neglect the fact that there is “infinite automation demand” and tools that can improve productivity, said McKinnon.
He said that means that demanding new products “increases more quickly than increasing efficiency”.
With the new technological advances, McKinnon said that there will be all kinds of new use cases that come out of people not even thought – and these products will have to be invented by people. Assuming that software engineers will become less necessary, it is as to assume that the launch of the iPhone meant that no one would need to create another communication application. McKinnon underlined Snapchat as an example of an apparently random concept ended up becoming a major social platform.
“There will therefore be a whole new generation of software engineers, quotes, unquoot, which build things around this new framework,” said McKinnon.
McKinnon’s daring predictions on the future of software engineers do not align with what some companies have said on the subject – Google declared that more than a quarter of its new code was generated by AI, and the CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, said that the company will not engage any engineer this year.
McKinnon said that he would “really” dispute “the affirmations of certain companies concerning the hiring less or no software engineers. He said that companies that sell AI products and services must demonstrate that they can stimulate customer efficiency. A way companies can transmit this, he said, is to make public statements on how they use their own tools to reduce hiring.
McKinnon predicts in a year or two, these companies will have more software engineers than they have done, even if they undergo “enormous efficiency gains”.
McKinnon said that companies like Okta, as well as Microsoft, Meta and Salesforce, will hire more software engineers because they are more effective and because demand for their services increases.
“Just look at the data,” said McKinnon.
businessinsider
