'Engineers will be sidelined in 18 months': A billionaire US investor issues a chilling AI-era warning

Chamath Palihapitiya, billionaire investor and CEO of Social Capital, isn’t known for alarmism. But when he echoed Replit CEO Amjad Masad’s words—“I no longer think you should learn to code”—it wasn’t just a hot take. It was a warning.

Palihapitiya, worth over $1.2 billion and a former Facebook executive, is plugged into Silicon Valley’s most forward-looking conversations. When he signals a shift this dramatic, engineers should pay attention.

Masad, a lifelong evangelist of code who helped build Codecademy and now leads Replit, isn’t just flipping his views. He’s forecasting a seismic collapse. Within 18 months, he implies, engineers won’t be builders—they’ll be supervisors. Tools for them? “Roadkill” on AI’s product roadmap.

For software engineers, this isn’t just another AI buzz cycle. It’s the beginning of the endgame.

Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit—a platform that lets users build apps using AI—has ignited debate after declaring that learning to code may soon be a waste of time. He made this claim while referencing rapid advancements in AI-generated programming.

Taking to X, Masad shared a video where he agreed with Dario Amodei of Anthropic, who predicted a near future where almost all code is generated by AI.

“In the upcase, like what Dario just said recently, all code will be AI-generated. I assume that on this optimisation path we're on, where agents are gonna get better and better and better, the answer would be different. The answer would be no. It would be a waste of time to learn how to code. But you could have different predictions, and I think different people will make different assumptions,” Masad said in the clip.

Still, Masad didn’t dismiss learning entirely. He emphasized focusing on fundamental thinking and problem-solving. “I would say kind of learn a bit of coding. I would say learn how to think, learn how to break down problems, right? Learn how to communicate clearly, as you would with humans, but also with machines,” he added.

In a follow-up post, Masad noted the irony. After years spent championing code through open-source, Codecademy, and Replit, he now believes AI is making the skill obsolete. “I understand all the cope. It was hard to arrive at this conclusion. There are obvious domain exceptions, but the trend is hard to miss,” he said.

His post triggered polarizing reactions. “Strongly agree with this… the engineering approach to solving problems is now even more crucial,” one user commented.

Others pushed back: “I still think knowing how to code is going to make you better at using AI tools... but I do see a future in 10-12 years where maybe we barely look at code anymore.”

“Learning to code is what’s allowing me to learn what you suggest... the real lesson is, don’t get caught up in syntax,” another added.

Masad’s statement lands at a time when the shift is already underway. Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that 25% of the company’s new code is now AI-generated. OpenAI’s Sam Altman has similarly said that AI is already doing half the coding work at many companies.