Claude Code: Boris Cherny and the End of Software Engineers

Boris Cherny, the brain behind Claude Code, an agentic coding tool developed by Anthropic, predicts a radical transformation in the software engineering profession. According to him, software engineering as we know it may be living its last days. He hasn't written code in over six months, believing that coding is now "solved" for his type of work.

Claude Code is, by many measures, the fastest-growing AI coding tool in the world. Cherny, who dropped out of school to lead a startup at 18 and had a stint at a hedge fund, joined Anthropic in September 2024 after five years at Meta. The product that became Claude Code started as a tool to tell him what song he was currently listening to.

At Anthropic, Cherny joined a small team called Labs. Initially, the company was hesitant to create coding-related products, but it eventually recognized the interest in improving its models and studying safety. The prototype of Claude Code, which had no user interface, quickly gained popularity, and within five days, half of the engineering team was already using it.

Cherny anticipates that the title "software engineer" may begin to disappear by the end of this year, dissolving into something closer to "builder." Despite the increasing automation, Cherny remains optimistic about the future of jobs. He envisions a multiplication of coding-related roles, even if the title of engineer may fade away. According to him, exponential trends make any precise prediction difficult, but he is certain that new roles will emerge in this changing landscape.