Stephan Schmidt, CTO Coach - July 31, 2025
The AI Manager - The End of Programming
Managing AIs instead of managing people
TL;DR: Developers will transition from writing code to managing AI agents—selecting the right AI for each task, reviewing outputs, providing feedback, and connecting them to data sources, mirroring how managers today oversee human teams. This shift makes programming less about translation of requirements into code and more about orchestrating and optimizing AI capabilities across different problems.
Where does software development go?
The end of programming will be no programming at all. AIs will do the things that are necessary without someone telling them. If there are still companies, this means sending emails to customers (who have AIs that are reading their emails and acting on them ;-) to sell more things, create APIs or websites on their own, hire other people (AIs) to do things - all without a “programmer” or any human telling them what to do. At home the AI is managing temperature and food, with no code or a developer creating it. Without you telling the AI what to do.
But this future is decades away. What about the near future?
For the near future, developers will become managers. Today developers are listening to product managers and translate requirements to code. In the near future, they will manage AIs just as managers today manage people.
Instead of hiring and managing people, they will select and manage different AIs. Developers get things to do and give them to a suitable AI for a solution. Different AIs for different tasks. Different tasks to one AI.
And then they need to manage those AIs. Select the right AIs and find new ones (just like a manager hires people). See what the AIs are doing, check the results, give them feedback (just like a manager would today), give them more data, connect them to data sources, grow them (again just like a people manager today).
Like people managers today, programmers will become AI managers.
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About me: Hey, I'm Stephan, a CTO Coach with 40+ years of software development and 25+ years of engineering management experience. I've coached and mentored 80+ CTOs and founders. I've founded 3 startups. 1 nice exit. I help CTOs and engineering leaders grow, scale their teams, gain clarity, lead with confidence and navigate the challenges of fast-growing companies.
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