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The companies that best take advantage of AI won’t be using it to replace human labor, said GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke. Instead, they’ll be upping their hiring of increasingly efficient engineers.
“The companies that are the smartest are going to hire more developers,” Dohmke said on an episode of “The Silicon Valley Girl Podcast.”
“Because if you 10x a single developer, then 10 developers can do 100x,” he said.
Dohmke said that AI has made it that much easier to learn how to program, and simplified the process for those who are already professionals. As the technology continues to evolve, he added, so will the capabilities of engineers.
“The most frustrating thing when you’re learning something is, you’re stuck somewhere, and then you have nobody at home or in your family or friends that can help you with that, because they’re all nontechnical,” Dohmke said. “So, when we’re saying AI is democratizing access, that’s what we mean. Everyone who wants to learn it can learn it.”
That doesn’t mean there won’t be a market for professionals, either, Dohmke said. Though people may be better equipped to leverage coding for personal ends, in the business sphere, a deeper knowledge of the craft will still be required to best utilize AI, the GitHub CEO said.
“I think the idea that AI without any coding skills lets you just build a billion-dollar business is mistaken,” he said. “Because if that would be the case, everyone would do it.”
Though some companies — particularly in the tech industry — are pumping the brakes on hiring or conducting layoffs while leaning into AI, Dohmke believes it’s only a matter of time before they realize there’s greater value in hiring more engineers.
“I think it’s a temporary effect right now. This is the natural conclusion for the short term — we keep things stable and we’re trying to figure out how the market develops,” Dohmke said. “But very quickly, I think we’re going to see people that say, ‘Well, wait a second, if I have one more productive developer, why wouldn’t I hire another one, and another one?'”
Dohmke said he still hasn’t seen a company completely eliminate developer workloads, even as programmers use AI to move through projects with greater speed.
“AI has already added more work to the backlogs. I haven’t seen companies saying, ‘Well, we’re draining all our backlog and we have almost nothing left,'” he said.
Dohmke also said it’s the “most exciting time” to be a developer — and that the process of programming has ultimately been changed for the better.
“The dream of software development was always that I can take the idea that I have in my head on a Sunday morning, and by the evening, I have the app up and running on my phone,” he said.
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