Aparna Chennapragada, who is chief product officer for experiences and devices at Microsoft, said she “fundamentally disagrees” with the belief that coding is no longer worth studying. Her remarks were made during a recent podcast appearance, where she directly addressed speculation about the long-term future of software engineering as a profession.
“I have one other additional bonus thing, which is a lot of folks think about, ‘Oh, don’t bother studying computer science or the coding is dead,’ and I just fundamentally disagree,” said Chennapragada.
Her defence of computer science careers comes in the wake of Microsoft announcing its second-largest layoff in company history. Earlier this month, the tech giant cut 6,000 positions across the company, with software engineers forming a major part of the affected workforce.
In Washington state alone, Bloomberg reported that more than 40% of the roughly 2,000 jobs that were eliminated belonged to software engineers. In addition to that, nearly 30% of the layoffs in the region were project management roles, further deepening the impact on key parts of the company’s workforce.
The layoffs reflect a shift within Microsoft and across the broader tech industry, where artificial intelligence is rapidly being deployed to automate parts of the software development process. Microsoft has been one of the most aggressive players in this area, with CEO Satya Nadella revealing in April that AI now writes up to 30% of the code in some of the company’s ongoing projects.This development has triggered a wave of uncertainty among developers and students alike, with many wondering whether traditional programming jobs will disappear as AI continues to advance.But Chennapragada said this shift doesn’t mean computer science is becoming irrelevant. Instead, she described AI as just the latest in a long series of changes in how coding is done.
“We don’t program in assembly anymore. Most of us don’t even program in C, and then you’re kind of higher and higher layers of abstraction,” she said, referring to the way programming languages have evolved over time.
She predicted that rather than fewer programmers, the industry may instead see the rise of a new type of role—what she called “software operators”.
“There’ll be an order of magnitude more software operators,” she said. “Instead of ‘Cs,’ maybe we’ll have ‘SOs,’ but that doesn’t mean you don’t understand computer science.”
While the comments were focused largely on software engineers, Chennapragada also acknowledged the pressure on project management roles, which were another major target of the layoffs.
She said the function of project managers could change in the AI era, becoming more about editing and decision-making than about ideation or manual coordination.
“In a world where the supply of ideas, supply of prototypes becomes even more like an order of magnitude higher, you’d have to think about, ‘What is the editing function here?’” she said.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has committed significant resources to artificial intelligence. The company has allocated nearly $80 billion towards AI infrastructure spending for the current fiscal year. At the same time, it is looking to reduce costs by restructuring its workforce.
This dual-track strategy—spending more on automation while cutting human jobs—has made Microsoft a flashpoint in the debate over how AI is reshaping the tech industry.
Despite the turbulence, Chennapragada maintained that human insight and foundational knowledge in computer science remain important.
Her comments are part of a broader effort within Microsoft’s leadership to respond to growing concerns about what AI might mean for traditional white-collar tech jobs.
(with ToI inputs)