AWS CEO says most developers may soon stop coding as AI takes over

At least that’s what Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman says, sharing his thoughts during an internal fireside chat in June. A recording of the meeting was obtained by Business Insider.

“If we move forward 24 months or some other time period — I can’t predict exactly when that will be — it’s possible that most developers won’t be writing code,” said Garman, who became AWS’s CEO in June.

“Coding is just like the language we use to talk to computers. It’s not necessarily a skill in itself,” the executive explained. “The skill in itself is, how do I innovate? How do I build something that’s interesting to my end users?”

Garman added that this means the programmer’s job will change.

“It just means that each of us needs to better understand what our customers need and what the end result of our work is, because that will increasingly require focusing on the work as opposed to sitting down and writing code,” he said.

No dire warning

There’s been a lot of talk lately about AI changing, or even eliminating, jobs as companies lay off workers or stop hiring to shift resources to AI development. New AI tools that automatically generate code could help companies do more with the same number of engineers or fewer of those expensive workers. AWS laid off hundreds of workers earlier this year.

In Garman’s case, he was offering advice rather than issuing a dire warning that programmers would be wiped out by AI. His tone was optimistic, suggesting more creative opportunities for programmers. He said AWS is helping employees “continue to upskill and learn new technologies” to increase their productivity with AI.

“Being a developer in 2025 may be different than it was in 2020,” Garman added.

No more “undifferentiated heavy lifting”

AWS spokeswoman Aisha Johnson told BI that Garman’s comments conveyed the potential for developers to “achieve more than they currently can” with new AI tools. There was no sign he expected the developer role to decline, she added.

“Matt laid out a vision for how AWS will continue to remove the undifferentiated heavy lifting from the developer experience so builders can focus more of their skills and energy on the most innovative work,” Johnson said in a statement.

“Everyone is a programmer now”

Garman is not the first influential executive to predict such changes in programmers’ work due to AI.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that “everyone is a programmer now” thanks to new AI-powered coding assistants.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said easier access to AI technology will create 1 billion programmers in the future.

Former Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque even predicted that “in five years there will be no programmers.”

New AI Workflow

During his keynote, Garman challenged employees to rethink the way they work and find new ways to incorporate AI into their workflow.

For example, he said software maker Smartsheet recently incorporated AI capabilities from Amazon’s Q chatbot into a Slack channel that answers employee questions about internal policies and documentation.

“We think about customers a lot, which is great, but I would also encourage everyone inside the company to think about how you fundamentally change what you do,” Garman said.

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