{"id":611142,"date":"2026-04-28T11:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T11:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/611142\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T11:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T11:44:09","slug":"replit-ceo-says-its-dumb-to-study-cs-to-make-a-boatload-at-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/611142\/","title":{"rendered":"Replit CEO Says It’s Dumb to Study CS to Make a ‘Boatload’ at Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don’t pursue computer science just for the money, says Replit’s CEO.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Loading audio narration…\n <\/p>\n

On an episode of the “20VC” podcast released on Saturday, Amjad Masad said that young people who are not deeply interested in CS should not study it.<\/p>\n

“If you don’t feel like you’re drawn to it like a fly drawn to a light, then don’t go into it because someone told you you’re going to make a boatload of money working for Google,” he said. “It’s pretty dumb to tell people to go into computer science if they’re not really intrinsically interested in it.”<\/p>\n

Masad cofounded Replit, an integrated coding environment, in 2016. The company has since pivoted into an AI-agent-led application builder and now competes with Microsoft’s GitHub, Cursor, and vibe-coding tools like Lovable<\/a> and Emergent. It’s backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, and Y Combinator.<\/p>\n

On the podcast, Masad added that in the early 2000s, people went into the field because they were passionate about understanding computers and programming. But after that, it became a “hyped up” subject, and college CS departments “exploded” because it became the easiest industry to make money in, he said. With AI, that is no longer the case.<\/p>\n

“Now, if you’re interested in it, there’s still ways to contribute. You could get into ML and AI and go work at the big labs or a company like ours,” he said, referring to machine learning.<\/p>\n

He said that even as AI models progress, fundamentals like data structures<\/a> and algorithms won’t change, and tech will always need people who understand the “underpinnings” of CS.<\/p>\n

A ‘wonderful major’<\/p>\n

Masad joins a group of tech leaders who say a CS education is still valuable.<\/p>\n

On a podcast appearance earlier this month, venture capitalist and Affirm CEO Max Levchin<\/a> said that writing good code is an art, and AI can’t take that away.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think the LLMs are going to naturally always deliver beautifully crafted, elegant, and yet scientifically correct code,” Levchin said.<\/p>\n

He added, “As a programmer, without having a solid foundation in computer science, I wouldn’t be able to have that.”<\/p>\n

In an interview with Business Insider published in December, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said that AI is replacing some coding tasks, but that doesn’t mean a CS degree isn’t valuable.<\/p>\n

“Many people think a CS degree<\/a> is just programming or something,” Hinton said.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot more to coding than writing the code,” he added. “Computer science is a wonderful major to learn systems thinking.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don’t pursue computer science just for the money, says Replit’s CEO. Loading audio narration… On an episode of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[182,114713,57583,265429,270,3426,19944,84559,265431,168,2066,3590,2190,265430,172,74],"class_list":["post-611142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ai","tag-amjad-masad","tag-andreessen-horowitz","tag-boatload","tag-business-insider","tag-company","tag-computer-science","tag-cs","tag-datum-structure","tag-google","tag-money","tag-people","tag-podcast","tag-replit-ceo","tag-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}