Do Son 
In an interview with Ben Thompson of Stratechery, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman remarked that, in his view, the most essential skill today is the ability to effectively utilize artificial intelligence tools. Reflecting on his earlier years, Altman recalled that upon finishing school, he believed the logical next step was “to become a really good programmer.”
Now, however, he asserts that “the obvious tactical move is simply to become very skilled at using AI tools.” He noted that this has, in many ways, supplanted traditional programming education.
This perspective is increasingly echoed by other technology leaders. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated in March that artificial intelligence would be writing software entirely on behalf of engineers within the next year.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a January conversation with Joe Rogan, revealed that his company is developing AI capable of generating “the majority of the code in our apps.”
Altman told Stratechery that mastering AI tools is essentially “the new version” of learning to code. He suggested that at least half of the coding process is already automated.
“I believe that in some companies, this number has already surpassed 50%,” Altman said. He added that the next transformative phase could be so-called agentic programming—something that, as of yet, has not been fully realized.
When asked whether OpenAI would continue hiring software engineers, Altman responded that there is still ample work at present, though the long-term outlook may differ.
“I’m operating under the assumption that each engineer will simply be able to do significantly more for some period of time. And then, perhaps, yes—we may ultimately need fewer engineers,” he noted.
Altman emphasized that such a shift could be a direct result of the very AI developments his team is currently pursuing.
