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The warning signs are piling up for anyone still working as a software engineer in 2026.<\/p>\n
In a recent episode<\/a> of former Airbnb guy Lenny Rachitsky\u2019s tidily-named audio show, \u201cLenny\u2019s Podcast,\u201d the creator of one of the most acclaimed AI coding tools, Boris Cherny, reaffirmed his belief that there are dark days ahead for the world\u2019s software developers.<\/p>\n \u201cI think by the end of the year, everyone is going to be a product manager, and everyone codes. The title software engineer is going to start to go away,\u201d Cherny said on the podcast, first spotted by Fortune<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s just going to be replaced by \u2018builder,\u2019 and it\u2019s going to be painful for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n Cherny is the chief architect of Anthropic\u2019s Claude Code, an agentic AI tool that\u2019s said to autonomously execute software production tasks with little oversight from human beings. While it\u2019s debated how effective Claude Code truly is \u2014 there\u2019s been a lot of irritation<\/a> with how fast the tool seems to drain user credits, for example \u2014 it\u2019s taken the programming world by storm nonetheless.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a point Cherny\u2019s keen to stress: \u201cI have not edited a single line by hand since November,\u201d he bragged on the podcast.<\/p>\n Calculated PR-grab the interview may be, Cherny is careful to guard Anthropic\u2019s reputation<\/a> as the \u201cadult in the room\u201d \u2014 relative to other<\/a> titans<\/a> of the AI industry, at least.<\/p>\n He admits, for example, that Claude Code has its limitations: \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re at the point where you can be totally hands-off, especially when there\u2019s a lot of people running the program,\u201d Cherny told Rachitsky. \u201cYou have to make sure that it\u2019s correct. You have to make sure it\u2019s safe.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, he\u2019s not immune to indulging in a little future AI hype either. Though Cherny emphasizes that today\u2019s software engineers still need to have a grasp of the fundamentals, he says that \u201cin a year or two, it\u2019s not going to matter.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, the creator of Claude Code insisted that Anthropic takes the coming labor-troubles \u2014 as if things aren\u2019t bad enough already<\/a> \u2014 \u201cvery, very seriously,\u201d suggesting that society writ large needs to have a long conversation about how we\u2019re going to proceed.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean the fellas at Anthropic are going to stop and wait for the world to catch up, however. \u201cI do think in the meantime, it\u2019s going to be very disruptive,\u201d Cherny reiterated, \u201cand it\u2019s going to be painful for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n