“Engineers are becoming sorcerers” | The future of software development with OpenAI’s Sherwin Wu

with Sherwin Wu, Head of Engineering at OpenAI

12 Feb 2026 19 min read 1h 14m

TL;DR

Engineers are shifting from writing code to managing fleets of AI agents, a role that now resembles wizardry or sorcery—and OpenAI's own teams write virtually all code with Codex. The second-order effect people aren't pricing in: enabling one-person billion-dollar startups will likely spawn a golden age of B2B SaaS, with hundreds of small startups building vertical software to support those solo founders.

Key Moments

Sherwin Wu

“95% of engineers use Codex. 100% of our PRs are reviewed by Codex for engineers.”

Opening statement on how deeply AI code generation has been adopted at OpenAI

Sherwin Wu

“Engineers are becoming tech leads. They're managing fleets and fleets of agents. It literally feels like we're wizards casting all these spells. And these spells are kind of like going out and doing things for you.”

Describing how the role of individual contributor engineers has fundamentally shifted with AI tools

▶ 0:08

Sherwin Wu

“There's a team that's actually doing an experiment right now within OpenAI where they are maintaining a 100% codeex written codebase. They run into the exact problems that you're describing. Team doesn't have that escape hatch.”

Explaining how removing the option to manually code forces teams to improve their AI prompting and codebase structure

▶ 0:35

Sherwin Wu

“I think there's going to be a huge like startup boom and like small like SMB style boom um where anyone can build software for anything. There might be a hundred other small startups building bespoke software. And so I think we might actually enter into a golden age of B2B SAS.”

Discussing the second and third-order effects of one-person billion-dollar startups on the broader startup ecosystem

▶ 25:35

Sherwin Wu

“This is the worst the models will ever be. And so this is the worst that the models ever be for software engineering as well.”

Quoting OpenAI VP of Science Kevin Whale on why engineers should trust AI tools more over time as capabilities improve

▶ 5:51

About Sherwin Wu

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Sherwin Wu is the Head of Engineering for OpenAI's API and Developer Platform, giving him a uniquely broad view into how AI startups are building and where the industry is heading. At OpenAI, his team oversees Codex adoption across the company—where 95% of engineers now use it daily and 100% of PRs are reviewed by AI. He previously worked at Quora and brings deep experience in scaling engineering organizations.

Takeaways

**AI is redefining engineering management, not elimination** Rather than replacing engineers, Codex is shifting their work from low-leverage code writing to high-leverage system design and agent orchestration. Engineers with 10-20 parallel Codex threads are now more akin to technical leads managing autonomous systems—a fundamental role change that rewards seniority and judgment rather than coding speed.

**Context encoding is the critical blocker for AI agents** When Codex fails to generate correct code, the root cause is usually insufficient context or underspecified requirements—not model capability. This is forcing teams to embed tribal knowledge into repositories via documentation, code comments, and markdown files, raising the bar for codebase maintainability and knowledge transfer.

**B2B SaaS is about to explode via vertical software** The one-person billion-dollar startup will catalyze a second-order boom in small, purpose-built software companies serving specialized verticals. This creates a golden age for B2B SaaS founders who can deeply understand niche industries and build AI-native tools at low cost—potentially 100x more startups than exist today.