Salesforce AI exec says learning this skill is more crucial than coding

Salesforce

People were always told that learning to code was the key to a great tech career. But things are changing. Jayesh Govindarajan, an AI executive at Salesforce, thinks there's something even more important than just learning to code.

“I may be in the minority here, but I think something that's far more essential than learning how to code is having agency,” Govindarajan told Business Insider.

With AI advancing so quickly, many coding tasks are now automated. But AI still needs humans to tell it what problems to solve. “We are building a system that can pretty much solve anything for you. It just doesn’t know what to solve,” he explained.

He gave an example to show what he meant. Imagine someone working with College Possible, a nonprofit that helps students get into college. Instead of coding a whole new program, they could use AI to create a rough version, test it with counselors, get feedback, and refine it—all without writing a single line of code. “You take it to the counselor, get their feedback, tweak it, and refine it,” he said.

This approach highlights two key skills: spotting problems and knowing how to use AI tools to solve them. If needed, an expert coder can step in later to polish things up, but the initial work doesn’t require programming at all.

As AI tools like GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer continue to change the industry, problem-solving and adaptability are becoming more important. Mark Zuckerberg has also talked about the value of critical thinking, saying, “If people have shown they can go deep and do one thing really well, then they’ve gained experience in the art of learning.”