As artificial intelligence replaces many coding chores, software professionals may soon need to acquire new skills.
That’s what the CEO of Amazon Web Services, Matt Garman, said during a June internal fireside chat.
Garman, who took over as CEO of AWS in June, stated, “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.”
Coding is similar to the language we use to communicate with computers. The executive stated that competence alone isn’t always the determining factor. The talent itself is like, what’s the best way to innovate? What steps should I take to ensure that the product I create is engaging for my users?
According to Garman, this implies that the role of a software developer will alter.
He said that it simply means that instead of sitting down and actually creating code, each of us needs to become more attuned to what our consumers need and what the actual end product is that we’re going to try to go produce.
No dire warning
Recent company layoffs and hiring freezes in order to direct resources toward AI development have heightened the discourse surrounding the possibility that AI will change or possibly eliminate jobs. Companies may accomplish more with the same number of engineers—or with fewer of these expensive employees—if they use new AI technologies that generate code automatically. Earlier this year, hundreds of workers were let go by AWS.
In Garman’s case, though, he wasn’t threatening to wipe out developers with AI—rather, he was offering guidance. His upbeat tone alluded to additional inventive chances for entrepreneurs. He claimed that AWS was assisting staff members in “continuing to upskill and learn about new technologies” so they could use AI to boost productivity.
According to Garman, the landscape for developers in 2025 can alter from that of 2020.
Eradication of “undifferentiated heavy lifting”
Garman’s remarks, according to Aisha Johnson, a spokesman for AWS, express prospects for developers to “accomplish more than they do today” using new AI capabilities. She went on to say there was no sign he thought the job of developers would decline.
In a statement, Johnson said, Matt presented a vision for how AWS will continue to free developers from monotonous heavy lifting so they can concentrate more of their skill and energy on the most innovative work.
‘Now, everybody is a programmer’
Garman is hardly the first well-known executive to foresee this kind of shift in developer positions brought about by AI.
Due to the introduction of new AI coding aids, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has declared that “everyone is a programmer now”.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes that increased access to AI technologies would result in the creation of 1 billion developers.
It was also prophesied by the former CEO of Stability AI, Emad Mostaque, that “no programmers in five years.”
A novel AI workflow
During Garman’s presentation, he advised employees to explore innovative methods to incorporate AI into their workflow.
For example, he stated that the software company Smartsheet recently integrated AI elements from Amazon’s Q chatbot into a Slack channel that responds to employee concerns concerning internal policies and documents.
They often think about customers, which is excellent, but he also encourages everyone internally to consider how you are entirely transforming what you’re doing, Garman said.
