Latest news with #ThePragmaticEngineer
Hans India
25-06-2025
- Business
- Hans India
GitHub CEO: Why AI Won't Replace Junior Engineers Anytime Soon
As artificial intelligence continues to transform the landscape of software development, many tech companies are rethinking how they structure their engineering teams. Amid the growing adoption of AI tools and automation, questions are rising about the future of entry-level developers. Are junior engineers becoming obsolete? Not according to GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke. In a candid conversation with The Pragmatic Engineer, Dohmke dismissed the idea that AI could fully replace junior developers. Instead, he emphasized that early-career engineers are not only still relevant—they're crucial in the AI era. Dohmke described the notion of AI replacing junior engineers as 'backwards,' arguing that these newcomers offer exactly what the tech world needs: openness, adaptability, and a different perspective. 'Often the folks that are younger in career bring a new perspective to the team and say, 'Hey, why don't we try this?' or 'I want to incubate this idea,'' he said. He pointed out that GitHub has recently renewed its investment in its internship program, highlighting the value of fresh energy and diverse backgrounds within the organization. 'It's just a really positive thing to hear those folks bring fresh ideas, a great amount of energy and often, you know, a different, diverse background into the company,' he noted. According to Dohmke, today's younger engineers have grown up with AI, smartphones, and cloud computing as part of their daily lives. This, he believes, gives them a distinct edge when using tools like GitHub Copilot. 'They get to use AI much faster—they get it because they are taking this with an open mind,' he said. 'They haven't been in an experience where some change has led to a big outage. So they're more open-minded.' He further explained that the expectations for modern developers are shifting. 'The goal of the future engineer is no longer to write it all from scratch,' Dohmke said. 'The goal is to combine their prompting skills and agent open source libraries into getting that problem solved much faster than they could have done two, three years ago.' The GitHub CEO stressed that both junior and senior engineers are vital to building effective teams. He advocates for hiring based on hands-on contribution, not just tenure. 'You hire people because they have a green contribution graph on their GitHub profile. That matters more to us than whether you have five years at one company and five at another.' In short, as AI reshapes how code gets written, it's the next generation of engineers—armed with creativity, curiosity, and Copilot—that might just lead the charge.
India Today
25-06-2025
- Business
- India Today
GitHub CEO says goal of future engineers is different, AI won't take their jobs if they can do this
As the tech industry races to integrate artificial intelligence into every corner of software development, the role of engineers is evolving. Many companies are even cutting back on hiring entry-level developers, aiming to automate work wherever possible using AI. This change, however, is raising questions about the future of junior engineers and whether companies still need them when AI can write code. According to GitHub CEO, Thomas Dohmke, AI can never replace junior engineers. In fact for him the fresh talent is more adaptable in the changing world. advertisementIn a recent interview with The Pragmatic Engineer, the head of Microsoft-owned GitHub pushed back against the narrative that companies are replacing junior engineers with AI. Instead, he argues that amid the AI transformation, the role of junior developers is shifting. And he believes that the junior talent which adapts to the shift will become important for tech companies to bring in new innovation and competition in the age of AI.'We are very excited about having this kind of like both junior and senior population in the company,' said Dohmke. He points out that GitHub has renewed investment in its intern programme after the pandemic. 'It's just a really positive thing to hear those folks bring fresh ideas, a great amount of energy and often, you know, a different, diverse background into the company.' According to Dohmke, the fresh new talent allows the company to bring in a critical outside perspective, standing out from legacy thinking. 'Often the folks that are younger in career bring a new perspective to the team and say, 'Hey, why don't we try this?' or 'I want to incubate this idea.''advertisement Dohmke notes that junior engineers have grown up with smartphones, cloud platforms, and social media—and more importantly, with AI tools. Hence, this generation gets a head start in understanding and applying technologies like GitHub Copilot and other AI coding assistants. He even called the widely circulating idea of AI replacing junior developers 'backwards'. 'They get to use AI much faster they get it because they are taking this with an open mind,' he said. 'They haven't been in an experience where some change has led to a big outage. So they're more open-minded.'Dohmke argues that the new generation of engineers is open and adaptable, and that this sets them apart from experienced coders. According to the GitHub CEO, junior engineers are more likely to experiment with new tools, master AI-assisted coding, and approach problems with a fresh mindset.'The goal of the future engineer is no longer to write it all from scratch,' Dohmke said. 'The goal is to combine their prompting skills and agent open source libraries into getting that problem solved much faster than they could have done two, three years ago.'For Dohmke, he wants to work with both the junior and senior population in the company for better output. And this idea, he suggests, should not just apply to engineering but to other departments as well. 'You hire people because they have a green contribution graph on their GitHub profile That matters more to us than whether you have five years at one company and five at another.'- Ends
Time of India
24-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke on why companies may never stop hiring junior engineers
Despite the growing advancements in AI coding assistants , GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke believes that companies will never stop hiring junior engineers. In a recent interview with The Pragmatic Engineer, Dhomke stressed on the fact that while AI tools are surely transforming software development , but human technical expertise, specifically the ability to built and maintain complex systems, remains indispensable. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Dhomke emphasised that junior engineers bring fresh energy, ideas and adaptability in the world shaped by artificial intelligence. 'They come in with the latest learnings from college, diverse backgrounds, and a willingness to experiment,' he said. Dhomke also underlined that fact that young engineers are also early adopters of AI which further makes them well-suited to work alongside tools like GitHub Copilot . He also added that prompt engineering and AI literacy are slowing become core skills and junior engineers and developers are often more open to learning and applying their without being constrained. "The folks that are younger in career bring a new perspective to the team and say, here, 'Why don't we try this?' or, 'I want to incubate this idea,'" he said. "And so we are excited about having this kind of like both junior and senior population in the company." While building software is being transformed by AI, Dhomke emphasised that engineering remains a craft and one still needs mentorship, collaboration, and problem-solving. At GitHub, he said, aims to maintain a balanced workforce of junior and senior engineers to foster innovation and long-term growth. 'Even in a world where AI agents become more autonomous, engineering jobs won't disappear,' Dohmke said. 'What matters is not how the job gets done, but that it gets done well.' Tired of too many ads? go ad free now GitHub CEO to software engineers: 'Key for winning' AI coding tools In related news, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says the "key for winning" with AI coding tools is maintaining the ability to quickly modify AI-generated code manually, rather than relying entirely on automated agents. Speaking on "The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck," Thomas Dohmke emphasized that developers need flexibility to seamlessly transition between AI assistance and hands-on coding. The CEO outlined an ideal workflow where AI agents can write code and submit pull requests, but developers retain the ability to make rapid changes using their existing programming skills. This approach prevents the productivity trap of spending minutes describing simple changes in natural language when the same task could be completed in seconds through direct coding.
Business Insider
20-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
'Keep AI on the leash' because it's far from perfect, says OpenAI's cofounder Andrej Karpathy
Andrej Karpathy thinks we're getting way too excited about AI, especially when it comes to deploying agents that act without supervision. In a keynote at an event hosted by Y Combinator earlier this week, the computer scientist said people need to "keep AI on the leash." The OpenAI cofounder said current large language models still make mistakes no human ever would. Karpathy likened LLMs to "people spirits" — uncanny simulations of human intelligence that hallucinate facts, lack self-knowledge, and suffer from "amnesia." "They will insist that 9.11 is greater than 9.9 or that there are two R's in 'strawberry,'" Karpathy said in a talk published on Y Combinator's YouTube channel on Thursday. "They're going to be superhuman in some problem-solving domains and then they're going to make mistakes that basically no human will make." Even though LLMs can churn out 10,000 lines of code in seconds, he said, that doesn't mean developers should sit back and let them run wild. "I'm still the bottleneck," he said. "I have to make sure this thing isn't introducing bugs." "It gets way too overreactive," he added. Karparthy urged developers to slow down and write more concrete prompts. "I always go in small incremental chunks. I want to make sure that everything is good," he said. "It makes a lot more sense to spend a bit more time to be more concrete in your prompts, which increases the probability of successful verification, and you can move forward," he added. Karparthy did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. The OpenAI cofounder coined the term "vibe coding" in February to describe the process of prompting AI to write code. The idea, he said, is that developers can "fully give in to the vibes" and "forget the code even exists." AI still needs supervision Karpathy isn't the only one urging caution. Bob McGrew, OpenAI's former head of research, said on an episode of Sequoia Capital's "Training Data" podcast earlier this week that human engineers are still essential — not just to guide AI, but to step in when things get messy. When something goes wrong or if a project "becomes too complicated for AI to understand," a human engineer can help break the problem down into parts for an AI to solve. AI agents are like "genies," said Kent Beck, one of the authors of the seminal "Agile Manifesto" — they'll often grant your wish, but not always in the way you'd like them to. "They will not do what you mean. They have their own agenda," Beck said on a recent episode of " The Pragmatic Engineer" podcast. "And the best analogy I could find is a genie. It grants you wishes, and then you wish for something, and then you get it, but it's not what you actually wanted." Beck also said results are so inconsistent that using AI to code can sometimes feel like gambling. Despite the nascent tech's limitations, even the biggest tech companies are betting on AI for the future of coding. AI writes more than 30% of Alphabet's new code, up from 25% last year, said CEO Sundar Pichai on the company's most recent earnings call.
Business Insider
17-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
He helped write one of the seminal texts about software engineering. Here's what he thinks about AI agents.
AI agents are like "genies," said Kent Beck, one of the authors of the seminal "Agile Manifesto" — they'll often grant your wish, but not always in the way you'd like them to. "They will not do what you mean. They have their own agenda," Beck said on a recent episode of The Pragmatic Engineer podcast. "And the best analogy I could find is a genie. It grants you wishes, and then you wish for something, and then you get it, but it's not what you actually wanted." After 50 years in programming, including a stint at Facebook and a hand in the foundational text about agile software development, Beck said he's now having the most fun of his entire career — and it's partly thanks to AI agents, even despite their unpredictability. "I'm trying all of the tools," he said. "Because right now, nobody knows what process is going to work best. Nobody knows anything. We should all be trying all the things that we can imagine, and then the truth will emerge out of all of that. So that's what I'm doing." Beck was one of the 17 authors of the 2001 paper the " Agile Manifesto," which outlines four values and 12 principles for faster software development. The paper inspired the "agile method" of software development, which became commonplace in Silicon Valley because of its efficiency-boosting techniques. Today, AI is already being used to replace human labor, particularly in programming, where it's hitting early-career engineers the hardest while simultaneously speeding up software development. Given the current state of coding, Beck believes that fundamental organizational skills are increasingly important rather than particular technical specializations. "So, having a vision, being able to set milestones towards that vision, keeping track of a design to maintain the levels or control the levels of complexity as you go forward," Beck said. "Those are hugely leveraged skills now, compared to, 'I know where to put the ampersands, and the stars, and the brackets in Rust.'" Though Beck does incorporate AI into his process, he doesn't necessarily trust it, he said. The technology isn't consistent enough to be relied upon. "Sometimes it even seems like the agent kind of has it in for you," he said. "'If you're going to make me do all this work, I'm just going to delete all your tests and pretend I'm finished, ha, ha, ha.'" Results are so inconsistent, he added, that using AI to code can sometimes feel like gambling. "It feels like a rat and the pellet," he said. "It's like there's just a run button and I have to click it every time. And I click it and it is a dopamine rush because this is exactly like a slot machine. You've got intermittent reinforcement, you've got negative outcomes and positive outcomes." Once in a while, though, the output will be just right — and Beck will be tempted to spin the wheel all over again. "The distribution is fairly random, seemingly. So it's literally an addictive loop to have it. You say, 'Go do this thing.' And then sometimes it's just magic."
