Scott Wu: There will be way more software engineers than ever
Scott Wu · 🕰️ The Oral History of Windsurf (ft. Varun Mohan, Scott Wu, Jeff Wang, Kevin Hou, Anshul R) · Jul 28, 2025 · at 1:26:26
Scott Wu, co-founder and CEO of Cognition AI, addresses concerns about AI replacing developers, arguing that higher levels of abstraction historically increase developer headcount.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And so, you know, I think software engineering, the job that we call software engineering is going to change, but I think practically, like, there's actually going to be way more software engineers than ever, you know, and I think there's a lot of precedent for that, too, you know.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Scott Wu
Wu: Running parallel AI agents turns every engineer into an engineering manager
“One of the cool kind of features of Devon, I'd say, is, you know, if, as an engineer, you're working on, let's say, four different tasks today, you know, you just give one to Devon number one, you give the second one to Devon number two, the third one to Devon…”
Scott Wu: AI will make engineers 5-10x more effective
“I think, you know, our demand for software to be built is actually probably a lot more than 10 X what we're currently getting, and so, you know, I think what happens is we get to open up the power of software engineering to a lot more people, and every single …”
Wu: AI automation will expose junior engineers to core architecture earlier
“You know, I think what happens, honestly, is I think that demand is going to just keep rising with supply. And I think the training process is going to change a little bit, but, you know, I think a lot of these core fundamentals of, you know, if you think of s…”
Wu: Autonomous coding agent capability currently doubles every 70 days
“What you see in general is that that doubling time is about every seven months, which already is pretty crazy, actually, but in code, it's actually even faster. It's every 70 days, which is two or three months, and so, you know, if you look at various software…”
Wu predicts AI coding agents will advance 16x to 64x in 12 months
“And I think that, you know, we're gonna see another 16 to 64 X over the next 12 months as well.”
Scott Wu: No customer or training data was shared in Windsurf transaction
“There was no, no, no information that was given out, for example, in terms of customer data, training data, any things like that. And so, so, you know, all of that is, is, is strictly proprietary and then remains, you know, our exclusive access.”