Марія БровінськаWork
7 July 2026, 12:47
2026-07-07
The "end of programmers" was predicted 34 years ago. The founder of EPAM explained why they were wrong then and what AI will change
Arkady Dobkin, co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of EPAM Systems, drew a historical parallel between the current boom in artificial intelligence and the predictions of the early 1990s about the rapid disappearance of the programming profession. According to him, at that time experts were also convinced that automation and globalization would leave most developers without jobs, but history took a different path.
Arkady Dobkin, co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of EPAM Systems, drew a historical parallel between the current boom in artificial intelligence and the predictions of the early 1990s about the rapid disappearance of the programming profession. According to him, at that time experts were also convinced that automation and globalization would leave most developers without jobs, but history took a different path.
In a post on LinkedIn, Dobkin cited the book Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, written in 1992 by American software engineering expert Ed Yordon. In it, the author predicted that by the end of the decade, programmers, systems analysts, and software engineers in the United States would face mass unemployment due to globalization, the development of Indian IT, and automatic code generation tools.
According to Dobkin, this book was one of the factors that prompted him to create EPAM Systems in 1993.
«It showed us not the end of the industry, but new opportunities,» he noted.
Yordon later revised his own prediction and even wrote the book Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer, admitting that his expectations had not come true.
According to Dobkin, the main mistake in the forecasts at the time was the assumption that the nature of programmers' work would remain unchanged.
«Instead, completely new categories of work emerged that no one could have predicted. They emerged faster than automation could replace the old ones,» he explained.
As a result, the value of developers' work has shifted from simply writing code to creating platforms, integrating systems, working with business context, modernizing legacy solutions, and solving complex engineering problems.
Drawing a parallel with the modern development of generative AI, Dobkin noted that today the industry is once again hearing predictions about «dark factories,» where AI agents will create software with almost no human involvement.
At the same time, in his opinion, most modern AI solutions still automate existing processes: writing code, migrating platforms, modernizing legacy systems, or automating support. This makes work faster and cheaper, but does not yet create fundamentally new categories of activity.
«Perhaps the big question today is not how many old jobs AI will automate. It’s how many new ideas, platforms, and software businesses will emerge from categories of work we can’t even name yet,» he wrote.
Dobkin believes that the greatest value in the coming years will be focused on the so-called «last mile» — the transformation of universal AI capabilities into specific corporate solutions that are secure, integrated into business processes, measurable, and actually used by companies.
«У США тестувальник може отримувати $100 000 і навіть $500 000 на рік». Історія релокейту дніпровської IT-родини, де чоловік працює в EPAM, а дружина влаштувалася в Tesla
Марк і Вікторія Терещенки — IT-подружжя. Він працює на позиції Lead Test Automation Engineer у компанії EPAM, вона — Software QA Engineer у Tesla. У серпні 2021 року пара разом з 1-річним сином здійснила релокейт до США за L візою. Ми зв’язалися з українською родиною та поговорили про труднощі переїзду, зарплату в Америці та специфіку роботи в компанії Ілона Маска.
«Моя фінансова мета — накопичити $1 000 000, щоб мати пасивний дохід і жити на нього». Як айтішники витрачають гроші та в що інвестують
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