Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan said AI doesn’t necessarily make engineers “10x as productive.”
Even if AI is writing “90%” of code, engineers have other responsibilities, he said on “Lenny’s Podcast.”
The cofounder said some companies may benefit from onboarding more engineers as AI makes them more efficient.
Just because AI is becoming increasingly capable of writing the lion’s share of code, that doesn’t necessarily mean engineers will be “10x as productive,” said Varun Mohan, the CEO and co-founder of Windsurf.
“Engineers spend more time than just writing code. They review code, test code, debug code, design code, deploy code, right?” he said on an episode of “Lenny’s Podcast.”
Windsurf, which offers coders an AI-powered development tool, has been riding the recent wave of vibe coding hype. Founded in 2021 as Codeium, the company is reportedly in talks to be acquired by OpenAI for around $3 billion. It previously raised $243 million in VC funding, according to PitchBook.
Concerns regarding the injection of AI into a flagging tech jobs market are rampant — but Mohan believes many companies should be investing more heavily into their teams of engineers, rather than paring back on hiring.
“We are definitely seeing over 30, maybe close to 40% productivity improvements,” Mohan said. “But I think for the vision that we’re solving for, even if I were to say the company in the long tail had 200 engineers, it’d probably be too low still, at that point. So the question is, how much more productivity do you get per person?”
He uses the hypothetical example of the CIO of JPMorgan Chase to illustrate the thinking of a big-name company with a budget — he expects these kinds of firms to realize that it’s time to onboard more employees, rather than thin the ranks.
“Her budget on software every year is $17 billion, and there’s over 50,000 engineers inside the company, and you told her, ‘Hey, each of these engineers are now able to produce more technology,'” Mohan said. “That’s effectively what you’ve done, right? The right calculus that JPMorgan Chase, or any of these companies will make is — the ROI of building technology has actually gone up.”
Mohan believes that, in the short term, companies might benefit from bringing on “even more engineers.”
“So the opportunity cost of not investing more into technology has gone up, which means that you should just invest even more,” he said in the podcast interview. Windsurf did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment by Business Insider.
While Mohan does qualify that it’s not a blanket solution — some of those who bet on a boosted team of engineers will likely benefit greatly.
“Now, that’s not true across the board. There are some companies that are happy with the amount of technology they’re building, and there’s a ceiling on the amount of technology they want to build,” he said. “But for companies that actually have a very high technology ceiling, this doesn’t mean you stop. This actually means you hire more.”
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