Coding career is dying
Spotify’s best engineers haven’t written a code since December!
It’s a bit of hyperbole to say that coding career is dying (though coding as a function isn’t - just like product management) - but here is the truth (whether we like it or not).
Traditional coding as a job is standing on a burning platform.
Elon Musk recently predicted that we are rapidly moving to a world where you no longer write code in a programming language; you describe intent in natural language, and AI systems compile that directly into optimized binaries.
In other words, the entire stack from product requirement to production artifact gets compressed into a single step mediated by powerful models.
This shift reframes what “software development” actually means. Today, developers spend time translating business needs into architectures, APIs, and code, then working through layers of compilation and infrastructure.
In Musk’s view, those translation layers are exactly what AI will eat first. If a model can understand constraints, edge cases, performance goals, and security requirements, it can generate machine‑level artifacts directly, at a speed and scale no human team can match.
Is this hype? NO.
Spotify’s best engineers haven’t written a code since December!
During its February 10, 2026 earnings call, Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström revealed that top engineers have not written a single line of code since December, instead overseeing Honk, an internal AI powered by Anthropic's Claude for generating code, fixing bugs, and deployments via simple chats.
The shift powered a stellar 2025, with revenue up 13% to €4.5 billion, monthly users hitting 751 million, and over 50 new features shipped like AI-curated Prompted Playlists and audiobook syncing.
What’s your take on coding as a career?
If you have a teenage kid who is in class 10th, what’d be your advice to him/her (apart from following your passion..which is..a bit unc-like :D)