In a clear message to the global developer community, Github CEO Thomas Dohmke warned that software engineers should either accept AI or quit their profession.
His candid statement, part of a blog post entitled “Developers Reinvented,” highlights the dramatic transformations that are underway in software development. This is not only about how you write your code, but also about the nature of being a developer.
This blog has already deeply integrated AI into its workflow from interviews with 22 developers. Their experiences draw clear pictures. AI is not a distant future, it is the need for the present.
“We have to either embrace AL or get out of our careers,” Dohmke wrote, citing one of the developers interviewed on GitHub.
This is the latest example of a strange marketing strategy by AI companies. Instead of selling products based on useful features and letting users decide, executives often deploy horrifying tactics that essentially warn them that if they don't get on the AI bandwagon they'll become outdated. For example, Julia Liuson, another Microsoft executive who owns Github, recently warned employees that “using AI is no longer an option.”
From skeptics to strategists
According to Dohmke, developers who initially rejected tools such as Github Copilot, viewed them as essential collaborators. Through trial and error, these people have evolved from skeptics to AI strategists, learnt to delegate coding tasks to AI agents, and focus their efforts on contextual design, rapid engineering, and validation, the CEO added.
This is not a minor change. The cutting edge developers of this transition report that their role has moved from code writing to architecture and auditing of AI-generated code. They talk about themselves not as coders, but as “code enablers” or “creative directors of code,” Domeke writes on his blog.
Redefining developer value
The CEO argued that the transformation would redefine the value of developers rather than reduce it. Those who employ AI tools will gain leverage early, not redundancy. The blog highlights major changes in thinking. Instead of optimizing only speed and efficiency, developers are using AI to enhance their ambitions for what is possible, Dohmke writes, but says complex, large-scale refactoring tasks or multi-agent feature builds that once seemed out of reach are achievable.
Related Stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
This restructuring presents career challenges. Adaptation or risk is abolished. As AI advances rapidly to automate up to 90% of code writing, timeline developer estimates could arrive within just 2-5 years. The most important skills include system design, AI-style encyability, delegation and quality assurance.
“The role of software developers is set on a path to change. Not everyone wants to change,” the CEO wrote. “Managing agents to achieve results may sound unfulfilled to many, but that's what developers do with a lower level of abstraction, and insist that they manage their computers through programming languages to achieve results.”
Humans are often reluctant to change, and Domeke ended his blog by saying, “It's okay.”
What's clear is that CEOs believe these people should seek different professions.
Maybe a plumbing?
Sign up for BI's Tech Memo Newsletter here. Please contact me by email abarr@businessinsider.com.
