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Why Coders Will Become “Mini CTOs” in the AI Era
Published June 8, 2025 · 88 views on YouTube
Will AI replace software developers?
No, according to Howdy.com co-founder Jacqueline Samira, but it will change what the job looks like. She argues AI is a powerful tool that will take over certain tasks and roles, but rather than shrinking the number of jobs, it will create more demand by letting people do more with the tool, similar to past technology shifts.
What happened to bookkeepers and accountants after Excel?
When Microsoft Excel launched, there was widespread fear it would eliminate bookkeepers and accountants who relied on manual ledgers and mental math. Instead, by 2025 there is an accounting and bookkeeping shortage, with more demand for accountants than ever. Excel let accountants service more businesses, and the role shifted: manual calculation mattered less, while becoming a strategic advisor who could think through tax strategies became the valuable skill. Samira uses this as the model for what she expects AI to do to other professions, including software development.
What is a “mini CTO”?
Samira predicts a future where coding as it exists today becomes obsolete and anyone can talk to AI as if it were another developer, describing inputs and receiving working software. In that world, software developers won’t disappear, but they will become a different type of developer: more strategic, and skilled at communicating clearly with an AI coder to get the right output. She and her co-founder Frank refer to this role as a “mini CTO.”
How is Samira already using AI for legal and contract questions?
Samira describes running contracts and MSAs through a chatbot before going to her lawyer, asking it to explain the legal jargon in simple terms and identify what the other party is trying to achieve or avoid. She still uses her lawyer for the actual legal defense, but arrives at that conversation already caught up to speed, which lets her lawyer spend time defending the company’s contracts and interests rather than explaining basic language to her.
What is the bigger opportunity Samira sees in AI?
She frames the shift as an exciting one because it gives more people the ability to become creators: someone with creativity, not necessarily deep coding skills, will be able to build the software of their dreams by directing AI. She expects this to mean more creation, more companies, and more jobs overall, even as it changes what today’s jobs look like.
Full video transcript
When you’re looking at AI as a whole, do you see AI eventually replacing certain roles in the workforce? Do you see that right now, or do you think it’s always going to be something that’s more augmentation for human talent?
So I think it will be replacing certain roles, and I think it’s going to be both. But let me give an analogy for the way that I think about AI and what AI is going to be. AI is a very powerful tool, and this tool will take over a lot of roles, but I don’t think it’s going to minimize the number of jobs. In fact, I think it’s going to create more demand for jobs. And if we look at history, whenever there are these great revolutions or great things that have happened, like the industrial revolution or what have you, it creates this compounding effect.
An example in our more recent past that we can all think about is when Microsoft Excel was invented. There was actually a lot of hysteria going on at the time, going, “Oh my gosh, there’s going to be no need for bookkeepers anymore. There’s going to be no need for accountants. There’s going to be no need for people that did these manual ledger processes.” In the past before Excel, if you were really good at doing quick math in your head and really detail-oriented, you tended to be a better bookkeeper, a better accountant. But now you’re given this tool that’s doing all of that stuff for you.
Fast forward to today, to 2025, many decades after Excel first came onto the scene, we have an accounting shortage. There is more demand for accountants now than ever before, and there’s actually a bookkeeping shortage. The reason being, Excel is a tool that allowed us to do more. It allowed accountants to service more businesses. It allowed bookkeepers to do more. And so it changed their role and it changed what was important about their role. Now, all of a sudden, the people who could do quick math in their head — yeah, maybe that’s a useful skill, but a better skill is being elevated to more of a strategic accountant who can think through different tax strategies. Accountants had to upskill, had to adapt, had to learn how to use it in a way that made them more in demand and more important to the companies they served.
And I see AI very similarly. AI is a massively powerful tool, and Frank and I, when we look to the future — five years from now, ten, whenever that time is — coding becomes obsolete in the sense that I do believe there will be a day where you can just talk to AI as if it is another developer, with inputs and outputs, and anybody with creativity can build the software of their dreams. To me, that means there’s just going to be more creation, more companies, more jobs, more needs. But there still will be a need for software developers — a different type of software developer. One that’s going to be more strategic, what we like to call a “mini CTO,” someone who knows how to communicate really well with the AI coder. It will augment, it will take away jobs, but it’s just going to change jobs, change how we see them today.
A great example of what it’s doing right now, even for me, is if I have any kind of legal question or a question about contracts. I have to deal with MSAs all the time, and people bring things to me constantly, and I really hate legal jargon — it makes me feel insecure because I feel like people are always trying to trick you or get you. So where I used to have to pay my lawyer $700 an hour to answer simple questions just because I was nervous about the language, I can now run it through something like ChatGPT and say, “Hey, explain this to me in simple terms. What are they trying to do? What are they trying to avoid?” And then I go to my lawyer and say, “This is what this is saying, this is what they want, this is what we as a company want to achieve.” My lawyer can then do the thing they’re good at, which is defend our company, defend our contracts, defend our purpose, rather than spending all this time explaining things to me. I’m caught up to speed so we can have a conversation where we’re on the same level.
That’s where I see this going, and it’s only going to go on a massive scale. But I see this from an exciting standpoint, because it’s going to give everyone the ability to be creators. And that is just so awesome.