Why Anthropic says engineers 'matter more than ever' even as AI writes the code

Anthropic’s AI now generates nearly all internal code, prompting fresh questions about whether engineers are being replaced, even as the company continues hiring.

• Anthropic's AI now generates nearly all internal company code
• Despite automation, Anthropic has over 100 open developer roles
• Engineers now focus on prompting, review, and system design

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Anthropic says its AI systems now generate nearly all of the company’s internal code. Yet it continues to post more than 100 open developer roles. The contrast has sharpened an already heated debate: is AI replacing engineers, or redefining what they do?

At the 2026 Cisco AI Summit, Anthropic chief product officer Mike Krieger said the company’s internal tools powered by Claude generate almost all of its code. In effect, Claude is helping build Claude. The disclosure followed earlier remarks by CEO Dario Amodei, who had predicted AI would soon handle most of the company’s coding work.

The scale of automation is significant. But it has also triggered questions about the future of software jobs.

The hiring paradox

A user on X put it bluntly: “Claude Code is writing 100% of Claude code now. But Anthropic has 100+ open dev positions on their jobs page?”

The question reflects broader anxiety in the tech sector. Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate roughly half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman has similarly predicted that many professional roles could be automated within 12 to 18 months as AI agents take on complex tasks.

Against that backdrop, claims of near-total internal code automation naturally raise concerns.

“Engineering is changing”

Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code at Anthropic, responded directly to the X post. Coding, he said, is only one part of the job.

“Someone has to prompt the Claudes, talk to customers, coordinate with other teams, decide what to build next. Engineering is changing and great engineers are more important than ever,” Cherny wrote.

Someone has to prompt the Claudes, talk to customers, coordinate with other teams, decide what to build next. Engineering is changing and great engineers are more important than ever.

— Boris Cherny (@bcherny) February 14, 2026

Anthropic executives say AI systems can now generate large pull requests spanning thousands of lines of code. The tools draft features, refactor components and produce documentation. Human engineers review, validate and approve the output before deployment. They remain responsible for architecture, system design and long-term planning.

A wider industry shift

Anthropic is not alone. Companies including Google and Microsoft have disclosed that significant portions of their production code are now generated by AI.

Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model reportedly built a C compiler independently within weeks, a milestone that would once have required substantial human effort. At the same time, Elon Musk has predicted that traditional coding could become obsolete, arguing that AI may soon generate optimized binaries directly.

Not replacement, but redistribution

Anthropic maintains that automation does not eliminate the need for engineers; it changes their focus. Engineers prompt models, evaluate outputs, manage guardrails and determine product direction. They also integrate AI systems into broader business workflows.

President Daniela Amodei has argued that as AI becomes stronger in technical domains, distinctly human capabilities, judgment, communication, cross-functional thinking, will grow in value.