This AI CEO says developers will be redefined as ‘builders’ in tech’s next big shift

• The role of software developers might be broadened into "builders," said Windsurf's CEO.
• AI is about to "democratize" software creation, said Varun Mohan.
• Engineering might start to look more like a research-driven culture.

The days of the traditional software developer are likely numbered, says Windsurf's CEO, Varun Mohan.

"This notion of just a developer is probably going to broaden out to what's called a builder," Mohan said on a podcast episode of "Y Combinator" that aired on Friday.

Traditional developers may no longer be the only ones building software, he said: "I think everyone is going to be a builder."

Windsurf, founded in 2021 as Codeium, offers users an AI-powered coding development tool and has been riding the vibe coding wave. According to PitchBook, it has raised $243 million in VC funding. In April, Bloomberg reported that Windsurf is in talks to be acquired by OpenAI for around $3 billion.

Before cofounding Windsurf, Mohan was a tech lead manager at Nuro, an AI robotics company. He also had professional experience as a software engineer.

On the podcast, Mohan said AI is about to "democratize" software creation. Instead of downloading an app, people might simply ask their AI assistant to build a custom tool tailored to their needs — one they can keep tweaking over time.

"I can imagine a future like that where effectively everyone is building but people don't know what they're building is software," he said.

Mohan also said vibe coding is going to get more capable. AI is supercharging every stage of the software development process — writing, reviewing, testing, debugging, and designing code, he said.

"AI is going to be adding 10 times the amount of leverage very shortly. It's going to happen much more quickly than people imagine," he said.

Vibe coding, a term coined in February by the OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy, refers to the process of feeding prompts to AI in order to write code. As Karpathy puts it, developers can "fully give in to the vibes" and "forget the code even exists."

The rise of vibe coding has shaken up the way people think about software development. It has left some engineers wondering if AI could put them out of a job and sparked debate among investors over whether technical skills are still a must-have for startup founders.

Don't hire for boilerplate coding

If AI can take over repetitive tasks like boilerplate coding, developers will be freed up to focus on what really matters — testing bold ideas, said Mohan.

Engineering starts to look more like a research-driven culture, one where they are testing hypotheses, evaluating them, and getting user feedback. Those are things that make a product significantly better, he said.

This also changes what startups should look for when hiring engineers, Mohan added.

"For engineers that we hire, we want to look for people with really high agency that are willing to be wrong and bold," he added.

Startups should never be hiring engineers to "quickly write boilerplate code," he said. "A startup can succeed even if they have an extremely kind of ugly code," he added.

"The reason why a startup fails is that they didn't build a product that was differentially good for their users," he said.