Microsoft’s CPO Aparna Chennapragada doesn’t buy the idea that coding is on its way out.
“A lot of folks think about, ‘Oh, don’t bother studying computer science or the coding is dead,’ and I just fundamentally disagree,” Chennapragada, the tech giant’s chief product officer of experiences and devices, said on “Lenny’s Podcast.”
“If anything, I think we’ve always had higher and higher layers of abstraction in programming,” she added.
Despite fears that AI could ultimately render software engineers irrelevant — or at least materially cut down on job openings in the field — Chennapragada believes that AI only adds a further layer of abstraction in the existing process of programming.
“We don’t program in assembly anymore,” she said. “Most of us don’t even program in C, and then you’re kind of higher and higher layers of abstraction. So to me, they will be ways that you will tell the computer what to do, right? It’ll just be at a much higher level of abstraction, which is great. It democratizes.”
Chennapragada said it was possible that, in the future, we’d think of software engineers more as software operators, but the role itself was unlikely to disappear.
“There’ll be an order of magnitude more software operators,” she said. “Instead of ‘SWEs,’ maybe we’ll have ‘SOs,’ but that doesn’t mean you don’t understand computer science, and it’s a way of thinking, and it’s a mental model. So I strongly disagree with the whole, ‘Coding is dead.'”
As for the fate of project managers, who are subject, like many other middle managers, to Big Tech’s “great flattening,” Chennapragada expects them to endure, albeit with modified responsibilities. Taste, she said, will be more important than ever.
“In some sense, if you look at it, there’s going to be a supply of ideas, a massive increase in supply of ideas in prototypes, which is great,” Chennapragada said. “It raises the floor, but it raises the ceiling as well. In some sense, how do you break out in these times that you have to make sure that this is something that rises above the noise?”
Chennapragada didn’t respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.
AI makes it easier than ever to actualize an idea, she said, which means that sifting through the glut of ideas will be especially important — so project managers will need to further develop what Chennapragada calls “the taste-making and the editing” instincts.
“In a world where the supply of ideas, supply of prototypes becomes even more like an order of magnitude higher, you’d have to think about, ‘What is the editing function here?'” she said.
Because it’s so much easier to just get started, Chennapragada says she’s observed less of an instinct to automatically turn to a project manager for approval. Though final approval will become more important than ever, she believes PMs have to earn the right to judge.
“There’s an interesting side effect I am observing in startups that I’m advising, companies, and even within the companies, that there used to be more gatekeeping, I would say, in terms of like, ‘Oh, we should ask the product leader what they think,'” Chennapragada said. “And again, there is a role for that editing function, but you have to earn it now.”
