Facebook boss: 'AI can take over the work of mid-level engineers'

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says AI is getting more powerful and will likely do the work of mid-level engineers at the company this year.

“Probably by 2025, Meta and other companies are working on this,” Zuckerberg said on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast on January 10, referring to the goal of programming automation. “There will be an AI model that works like a mid-level engineer, with the level of someone who can write code well.”

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, at an event in Menlo Park, California in September 2024. Photo: AP

According to Zuckerberg , the initial adoption process may be costly, but the company will soon reach a "point" where AI operates smoothly, even being able to control and plan for itself. At this point, the cost will drop significantly.

According to data compiled by Levels.fyi , a company that compiles tech compensation data, released early last year, Meta now pays mid-level software engineers “in the six figures.” Senior engineers can earn as much as $1.2 million a year.

Meta has not commented yet.

Last month, Salesforce, an American cloud data company, also announced that it would not hire any more software engineers by 2025 due to the significant increase in productivity thanks to AI. The company is currently developing Agentforce - a fully customizable, automated AI Agent that connects to enterprise data and performs tasks in the areas of sales, customer service, marketing and commerce.

"With AI tools in place across our engineering teams and departments, including Agentforce, our productivity has increased by more than 30% by 2024 — an incredible amount. I can't believe what we're achieving," Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, wrote on the company blog on December 17, 2024.

Benioff said Salesforce will focus heavily on sales this year because “it’s really important to explain to people exactly what value the company has and what it can achieve.” He plans to hire 1,000 to 2,000 salespeople “in the short term” to help with that.

“Everything at Salesforce is now about Agentforce. It’s the only thing that really matters right now,” Benioff emphasized.

Once considered a “hot” job for many years, programmers are being replaced by AI and automation tools in some companies. Last year, Klarna, a Swedish online finance company, said it had almost stopped hiring for more than a year because it believed “ AI can do everything .”

According to Business Insider , AI is increasingly affecting employment, causing many people to worry about their jobs being "robbed". Previously, experts also said that this year's massive tech layoffs were partly related to the " AI ghost ".

A 2023 McKinsey & Company report estimated that 12 million Americans will have to change careers or become unemployed by 2030 as AI develops. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted at the World Economic Forum in early 2024 that more than 40% of the global workforce will be affected by AI by 2030.

However, according to experts, AI has shown excellent progress in many fields, but has not completely replaced humans, especially in stages that require strategic thinking and research. That means, AI is not strong in the fields of physics and social interaction.

"Complex application areas that have social factors and affect people will still be where humans are mainly responsible. AI supports technology design, but that is completely different from understanding and handling the social context in which technology is applied," Professor Yoshua Bengio shared at an AI event last month in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Mr. Truong Gia Binh , Chairman of FPT, said that AI should be considered an "ally" and not take over human jobs. But instead of standing still, each person needs to learn and adapt to stay competitive in the labor market, needing a basic understanding of AI, machine learning, data science, as well as problem-solving and analytical skills to work effectively with AI systems .