India's Outsourced Coders 'Gone in the Next Year or Two' (by Mid-2025)
Stability AI CEO, 2023: India's Outsourced Coders 'Will Be Gone in the Next Year or Two'
Emad Mostaque told bank analysts AI would wipe out India's outsourced programming jobs by about mid-2025. India's tech industry kept hiring.
What was said
“outsourced coders up to level three programmers will be gone in the next year or two, whereas in France, you'll never fire a developer”
— Emad Mostaque (founder and then CEO, Stability AI) · said Jul 2023 · due Within a year or two of July 2023 (by mid-2025)
Nasscom's annual review put India's tech workforce at 5.8 million in the year to March 2025, with 126,000 net new hires.
The fine print
Said 'on a call with analysts at the Swiss investment bank' UBS in July 2023, per CNBC. He reasoned: 'If you're doing a job in front of a computer, and no one ever sees you, then it's massively impactful, because these models are like really talented grads.' His bigger deadline, no programmers at all by 2028, is a separate entry: 'No Programmers in Five Years'.