“Engineers are becoming sorcerers” | The future of software development with OpenAI’s Sherwin Wu
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What is the current impact of Codex on software engineering at OpenAI?
95% of engineers use Codex. 100% of our PRs are reviewed by Codex. For engineers, I don't know what job has changed more in the past couple years. Engineers are becoming tech leads. They're managing fleets and fleets of agents. It literally feels like we're wizards casting all these spells, and these spells are kind of like going out and doing things for you. What do you think people aren't pricing in yet? The second or third order effects of the one person billion dollar startup. To enable a one person billion dollar startup, there might So I think we might actually enter into a golden age of B2B SaaS. I've been hearing more and more there's this stress people feel when their agents aren't working. There's a team that's actually doing an experiment right now with an OpenAI where they are maintaining a 100% codex written code base.
They run into the exact problems that you're describing. And so usually you're like, all right, I'll roll up my sleeves and figure it out. This team doesn't have that escape hatch. You've shared that listening to customers is not always the right strategy. The field and the models themselves are just changing so, so quickly. They tend to like disrupt themselves. The models will eat your scaffolding for breakfast. What's your advice to folks that are like, okay, I don't want to miss the boat? Make sure you're building for where the models are going and not where they are today. There's a quote from Kevin Whale, our VP of science here. He likes saying this is the worst the models will ever be.
Today, my guest is Sherwin Wu, head of engineering for OpenAI's API and developer platform. Considering that essentially every AI startup integrates with OpenAI's APIs, Sherwin has an incredibly unique and broad view into what is going on and where things are heading. Let's get into it after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by DX, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers. In the AI era, organizations need to adapt quickly. But many organization leaders struggle to answer pressing questions like: which tools are working? How are they being used? What's actually driving value? DX provides the data and insights that leaders need to navigate this shift.
With DX, companies like Dropbox, Booking.com, Adian, and Intercom get a deep understanding of how AI is providing value to their developers and And what impact AI is having on engineering productivity. To learn more, visit DX's website at getdx.com slash lenny. That's getdx.com slash lenny. Applications break in all kinds of ways. Crashes, slowdowns, regressions, and the stuff that you only see once real users show up. Sentry catches it all. See what happened, where, and why. Down to the commit that introduced the error, the developer who shipped it, and the exact line of code, all in one connected view. I've definitely tried the five tabs and slack thread approach to debugging. This is Better. Sentry shows you how the request moved, what ran, what slowed down, and what users saw.
Sear, Sentry's AI debugging agent, takes it from there. It uses all of that sentry context to tell you the root cause, suggest a fix, and even opens a PR for you. It also reviews your PRs and flags any breaking changes with fixes ready to go. Try Sentry and Sear for free at Sentry.io. Lenny and use code Lenny for one hundred dollars in century credits. That's S C N T R Y dot IO slash Lenny. Sherwin, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I want to start with what's feeling like a barometer of progress in AI, especially in engineering. What percentage of your code, if you even write code anymore, and your team's code, is written by AI at this point?
I do write code occasionally now, still. Uh and I actually say for managers like myself, it's way easier to use these AI tools uh than to manually code at this point. And so I know for myself and some of the other EMs engineering managers at OpenAI, uh all of our code is written by by Codex uh at this point.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the current impact of Codex on software engineering at OpenAI?
0:00–13:57
2
How are engineers managing fleets of AI agents and what challenges arise?
13:57–30:46
3
How has AI changed the role and responsibilities of engineering managers?
30:46–46:09
4
Why is there a growing productivity gap between AI power users and others?
46:09–1:01:37
5
What does “models will eat your scaffolding for breakfast” mean for future tooling?
1:01:37–1:14:18
6
Why is the next 12‑24 months a critical window for engineers before roles fully transform?
1:14:18–1:19:37
Speakers
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