Artificial intelligence may not be replacing developers yet, but it seems the fear of AI-led layoffs is already turning true. The best approach to retain the job you are in seems to be upskilling with the recommended AI tools.
The tables seem to have turned now as the companies, which until a year or two ago were asking employees to avoid AI tools, are now instructing them to adapt to AI, or find another employer.
Those who resist AI are facing severe consequences. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently admitted that he fired engineers who refused to sign up for the company’s AI coding tools. Armstrong said on John Collison’s podcast ‘Cheeky Pint’ that he was stunned when some managers warned adoption would be slow even after Coinbase bought enterprise licenses for GitHub Copilot and Cursor.
“I went rogue,” he said, about the mandate he dropped into the company’s engineering Slack: “AI is important. We need you all to learn it and at least onboard. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week. And if not, I’m hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it and I’d like to meet with you to understand why.”
Coders to ‘Code Enablers’?
That Saturday meeting led to layoffs. “Some of them had a good reason, because they were just getting back from a trip or something, and some of them didn’t [have a good reason]. And they got fired,” Armstrong said.
He admitted it was a “heavy-handed approach” that not everyone liked, but he wanted to make the message clear: AI is not optional.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke has been just as blunt. “Either you embrace AI, or get out of this career,” he wrote on X earlier this month while sharing his blog post on the subject.
Dohmke argued that developers are shifting from being coders to “code enablers,” managing AI agents, prompts, and outputs. He predicted that up to 90% of code writing could be automated within five years. “The software developer role is set on a path of significant change. Not everyone will want to make the change.”
Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, and several AI startups are increasingly expecting AI to write most of the code for them, and the same is the case with Indian IT majors and startups.
At IgniteTech, CEO Eric Vaughan went even further, tearing down his workforce when he realised resistance was stronger than adoption. By early 2024, nearly 80% of staff were gone. “Changing minds was harder than adding skills,” he said.
Every Monday was declared “AI Monday.” Staff were told they could not work on anything else. Those who refused were out. “Every company is facing an existential threat by this transformation,” Vaughan said. “This is not a tech change. It is a cultural change, and it is a business change.”
Enabling Employees?
The debate is no longer whether AI will reshape coding, but how much control developers will retain. For Armstrong, Dohmke, and Vaughan, resistance is grounds for firing.
Some CEOs are pretty clear that they want everyone to know that the firing and layoffs are because of AI. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, in a memo on July 24, said that the layoff of 15,000 people over the course of the previous 12 months had been “weighing heavily” on him despite the aggressive AI push.
Similarly, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees amidst the 12,000 TCS layoffs that employees basically have to use more AI tools. “I think we have to accomplish more,” Pichai said. “The world is looking to Google for leadership and responsible innovation.” But it does not just stop here.
According to the report, Pichai further highlighted that the firm needs to optimise internal processes and actively reduce redundancy, while maximising team output. Overall, being more AI-savvy.
AI advisor and investor Allie K Miller, while posting on LinkedIn last year a list of jobs that are paying big to people working with AI, said that AI will not replace jobs but actually enable employees. One of the startups she invested in told her: “We’d rather hire one software engineer who knows how to use AI than five who don’t, even if it’s the same cost.”
Read: 1 Developer Who Knows AI is Better Than 5 Who Don’t
The Fork in the Road
Beyond the mandates and firings, adoption numbers suggest the shift is already underway. At Y Combinator, partner Jared Friedman revealed that a quarter of founders admitted that over “95% of their codebase was AI-generated.” These were highly skilled founders who, just a year earlier, would have built everything themselves.
The cultural shift is visible even in smaller startups. “We’ve been using Cursor in our organisation for a while now, and it’s definitely boosted productivity,” Abhishek Upperwal, founder of Soket AI had earlier told AIM. But he warned that over-reliance wastes time when tools fail. “They work really well for common tasks like web development but tend to fall short with more complex challenges.”
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had earlier gone a step further when he announced the company would not hire any more software engineers this year as AI is just better.
What’s certain is that coding as a skill has evolved. It involves prompt design, AI orchestration, auditing, and debugging at scale. Some call it “vibe coding,” others say this is the end of software engineering as we know it.
The fork in the road for developers is clear: either learn to work with AI or risk being left behind. And this time, CEOs are not waiting around.
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