An infinite pool of software engineers
If you’re interested (like I am) in the future of enterprise SaaS and what AI and agents mean for our craft, our business models and our industry, I recommend watching the hour-long “debate/discussion” below. Box CEO Aaron Levie is clearly bullish, whilst a16z partners Martin and Steven are more cautiously skeptical.
You should watch the video and make up your own mind, but I do want to highlight one idea from Aaron in the discussion that I think is worth touching on, and this is what I am deciding to call the “Aaron Levie Theory of Agents”.
It’s about an infinite pool of software engineers. Imagine one person, inside an organisation, who now has access to this infinite pool of smart and capable people, who are never to busy to help them. These “people” can do three distinct things: write code on the fly to solve problems, use existing APIs and services, and use skills or tools to perform work according to set instructions and guidelines.
The code part really matters here, because code is just a very flexible, robust and universal tool for solving knowledge-work problems. Why? Because at the end of the day, everything you would normally do on your computer, is of course, just code. A presentation, a spreadsheet, a website, a form, an application, an internal tool. All of these are just code. This is why coding agents are the first true “killer app” for LLMs.
It’s still early, and in many ways agents are still more promise than reality, but if you imagine what it would mean to give every knowledge worker a potentially infinite pool of software engineers to better do their job, one can’t help but get excited.
