Vibe coding isn’t replacing engineering jobs at one tech giant.
In an episode of the “20VC” podcast released Monday, Atlassian’s cofounder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said companies would need more software developers because more and better technology will be created over time.
“Five years from now, we’ll have more engineers working for our company than we do today,” Cannon-Brookes said. He added: “They will be more efficient, but technology creation is not output-bound.”
This is because people will keep coming up with new ideas for the technology they want, and engineers will be needed to build it, he said.
“Maybe crap ideas, maybe good ideas,” he said. “I like to be an optimist and think we will end up with far more technology, firstly, and secondly, far better technology.”
Cannon-Brookes cofounded the Australian-American software company in 2002. Atlassian is best known for Jira, an issue- and project-tracking software. According to regulatory filings, the company had 13,813 full-time employees as of June — about 14% more than the year before.
The CEO’s optimism extends to new computer science graduates.
He said that Atlassian is hiring more new graduates this year than last year and 2023 because it needs more staff for its research and development and engineering teams.
“There’s a good chance that those graduates come in with a different view on what it means to be a software developer and shake up the existing world of talent in a positive way for my business,” he said.
Cannon-Brookes said that just because some finance or marketing professionals are using vibe coding tools to build applications or create websites doesn’t mean there is less for “core technologists to do.”
Atlassian did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The Atlassian CEO joins several other tech leaders who say that vibe coding, a term meaning AI-assisted coding, isn’t all doom and gloom for software engineers.
In April, Windsurf’s then-CEO Varun Mohan said vibe coding doesn’t mean companies should hire fewer engineers.
“Engineers spend more time than just writing code. They review code, test code, debug code, design code, deploy code, right?” the cofounder of the vibe coding startup said in a podcast interview.
On a June podcast, Bob McGrew, the former chief research officer at OpenAI, said professional software engineers are not going to lose their jobs to vibe coding just yet.
“If you are given a code base that you don’t understand — this is a classic software engineering question — is that a liability or is it an asset?” McGrew said of software made with vibe coding. “And the classic answer is that it’s a liability.”
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