Facebook’s early Indian techie is ‘sad and confused’ with Anthropic’s AI taking over writing code

Aditya Agarwal wrote Facebook’s original search engine, became its first Director of Product Engineering, and later served as CTO of Dropbox. (Image credit: X, Unsplash)

One of Facebook’s earliest engineers and a former CTO of Dropbox, Aditya Agarwal, has offered a rare, introspective account of what the AI era feels like from the inside of Silicon Valley’s first generation of builders.

In a post on X, Agarwal said a recent weekend spent coding with Anthropic’s AI model Claude left him filled with “wonder” but also “a profound sadness”. The experience, he wrote, made it clear that “we will never ever write code by hand again”.

“It doesn’t make any sense to do so,” Agarwal said, describing how a skill that once defined his professional identity had suddenly become “free and abundant”. “Something I was very good at is now free and abundant. I am happy… but disoriented.”

When the craft disappears overnight

Agarwal is not an ordinary engineer. He wrote Facebook’s original search engine, became its first Director of Product Engineering, and later served as CTO of Dropbox.

In his post, Agarwal noted that not only the function of his early career — writing complex software — but also its form — building social networks — is now being replicated by AI agents. He referenced “lobster-agents” creating social content that, at scale, is “kind of indistinguishable from humans on the larger internet”.

“So both the form and function of my early career are now produced by AI,” he wrote. “I am happy but also sad and confused.”

For Agarwal, the moment is not just economic or technological, but deeply personal. “If anything,” he wrote, “this whole period is showing me what it is like to be human again.”

‘The photography moment for software’

Agarwal's post triggered a wave of reflection from fellow technologists, many of whom framed Agarwal’s reaction as a turning point for knowledge work.

One X user compared the moment to the invention of photography, which forced painters to abandon realism and reinvent art through impressionism. “Coding was our realism,” the user wrote. “Now we have to find our impressionism.”

Another said Agarwal was quietly articulating what many elite professionals have yet to confront: that decades of accumulated expertise can now be matched by “the best prompt in the room”. The recalibration of usefulness, the user warned, is coming for every knowledge worker — most simply haven’t had their “weekend with Claude” yet.

Some reactions to Agarwal’s post were more cautious. One user likened the current phase to a gold rush rather than a renaissance, warning that average software quality may decline and expectations may fall over the next decade as the industry adjusts.

Market turmoil mirrors personal unease

Agarwal’s comments come amid growing turbulence across global tech markets. The launch of new AI tools by Anthropic recently triggered a sharp sell-off in software and IT stocks, with investors questioning whether AI will compress demand for traditional coding, legal, and enterprise services.

Analysts have described the moment not as a cyclical correction, but a structural shift — one that challenges long-held assumptions about labour, value, and productivity in the software industry.