As coding gets easier with AI, there will be more engineers, not fewer, says GitLab's CEO
Engineers are not an endangered species, according to GitLab's CEO, William Staples.
On an earnings call for the code management software company on Tuesday, Staples said AI coding assistants will increase the number of engineers because people can now code without advanced technical skills.
"There's a raging debate about this, and I think a lot of it is borne out of anxiety about the future by engineers," Staples said.
Staples said throughout his 30-year career, he has seen advances in productivity that appear to make engineering skills less necessary.
"This one is definitely stronger than other times because of the power of AI," he said. "But every time I've also seen that higher level of abstraction and more productivity actually yield more opportunity."
GitLab's coding assistant, Duo, competes with tools like Microsoft's Copilot, Cursor, and Windsurf.
Staples said that customers are testing coding assistants side-by-side, but he doesn't "have a lot of concern" about GitLab's ability to compete.
GitLab's chief financial officer, Brian Robins, said that AI coding has been good for its business. Customers are adding more employees to their subscriptions, and more code is being produced, which GitLab's other services help manage.
In the first quarter, GitLab reported revenue rose 27% year-on-year to $214.5 million, slightly above analysts' forecasts. Revenue guidance of $226 million to $227 million for the second quarter fell short of the projected $227 million, disappointing investors. GitLab's stock tumbled over 12% after-hours on Tuesday.
GitLab is up 11% in the past year because of growing subscriptions and price increases.
GitLab did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Using AI to write code, dubbed " vibe coding" by theOpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy, has skyrocketed this year. While some in tech circles say leaning on it heavily is short-sighted and the task is being trivialized, vibe coding has already started changing how much Big Tech and venture capital value people with software engineering expertise.
Earlier this week, Business Insider reported that vibe coding is no longer a nice-to-have skill. Job listings from Visa, Reddit, DoorDash, and a host of startups showed that the companies explicitly require vibe coding experience or familiarity with AI code generators like Cursor and Bolt.
Big Tech is getting in on the action, too.
At a conference last week, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, said he's had a "delightful" time vibe coding a webpage. Last week, BI reported Amazon is discussing formally adopting Cursor after employees inquired about using the tool.
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