David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

That could also happen, maybe.

But what we're seeing right now is that a lot of the big shops, a lot of the big companies are

are not hiring like they were five years ago.

They're not anticipating they're going to need tons more programmers.

Controversially, Toby actually put out a memo inside of Shopify asking everyone who's considering hiring someone to ask the question, could this be done by AI?

Now, he's further ahead on this question than I am.

I look at some of the code entrenches and I go like, I'd love to use AI more.

And I see how it's making us more productive.

But it's not yet at the level where I just go like, oh, we have this project.

Let me just give it to the AI agent.

And it's going to go off and do it.

That's part of it.

And I think it is important to have that humility that what you are good at may no longer be what society values.

This has happened a million times in history that you could have been exceptionally good at saddle making, for example.

That's something that a lot of people used to care about because everyone rode a horse.

And then suddenly riding a horse became this niche thing.

hobby that there's some people care about it, but not nearly as many.

That's okay.

Now, the other thing of this is I've had the good fortune to have been a programmer for nearly 30 years.

That's a great run.