Spotify CEO Says Top Engineers Haven’t Written Code in 2026

Spotify CEO Gustav Söderström says the company’s top developers have entered a new era of software creation — one where they no longer write code themselves. Speaking during Spotify’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Söderström revealed that some of the company’s most senior engineers “haven’t written a single line of code since December,” instead using artificial intelligence tools to generate it.

According to Söderström, these engineers now focus on prompting AI systems and supervising the code produced, rather than manually typing it out. He framed the shift as a productivity breakthrough, suggesting that developers who no longer write code directly “have never been as productive as they are now.”

The Spotify executive described AI adoption as inevitable and said the company is determined to lead the transition, even if it disrupts long-standing engineering practices. “There is going to have to be a lot of change in these tech companies if you want to stay competitive,” he said, acknowledging that the shift could be painful for many organizations.

However, not everyone in the tech world is celebrating. Some engineers argue that reviewing large volumes of AI-generated code can be more exhausting than writing it from scratch. A growing conversation around “AI fatigue” highlights concerns that developers are increasingly acting as quality control supervisors for an endless stream of machine-produced pull requests.

Despite the debate, Söderström emphasized efficiency and output, saying companies like Spotify could soon produce far more software than before. Ultimately, he suggested, the only real limitation may be how much change consumers are willing to accept at once, as AI continues to reshape how digital products are built.