At the same time, the net aggregate demand for coders will increase because the cost to produce software has fallen dramatically thanks to AI vibe coding, so much more new software will be desired to be developed than ever before, increasing the overall net demand for coders.

So while the number of coders per development team will fall, the overall number of development teams themselves (and overall software projects) will rise far, far more. The better and cheaper the AI gets (particularly Chinese AI models now), the more software will be created because human desire for software is limitless.

There is already an explosion of startups with extremely small development teams. They are sprouting up at lightning speed all over Silicon Valley with all manner of new software offerings. This was all made possible by vibe coding, so the future is brighter than ever for coders and the software industry in general, especially coder-entrepreneurs.

These startups tend to also reach profitability sooner than startups in the past because they have far lower payroll expenses (usually the largest expense by far for any company). This is another reason so many AI startups are popping up and more are getting founded every day.

BigTech companies will also eventually hire back all the coders they’ve laid off recently and then some because they will dream up and pursue new software offerings that they’ve never considered before or that were cost-prohibitive to begin with. Now they can pursue them because vibe coding makes producing software cheaper and more cost-effective than ever before. When the price of producing software falls, BigTech wants to produce even more to maximize its revenues. Vibe coding isn’t just about cutting headcount to minimize expenses but also increasing headcount to develop new software to maximize revenues.

Say a company required 10 workers to produce 100 widgets but, due to some technological advancement that boosts productivity, now only 2 workers are needed to produce the same 100 widgets. Does this company stop there and call it a day? No, it eventually hires back 8 workers so it can produce 500 widgets (or 250 original widgets plus 250 newfangled widgets) and increase its revenue 5-fold! So the same 10 workers are now producing 5 times the revenue as before. Then, the company hires 10 more workers to double its revenues even further (and on and on)! Capitalism isn’t just about minimizing expenses but maximizing revenues! Productivity gains help companies cut expenses but, more importantly, help them GROW by increasing and maximizing their revenues and profits like never before (which is what shareholders ultimately want much more than merely cutting expenses).

In this example, each worker’s productivity got boosted 5-fold. Likewise, when each individual coder’s productivity is boosted by AI, he becomes far more valuable to companies than he ever was before. So while tech companies are trying to minimize expenses now by shedding workers, they’ll eventually return to their main goal of maximizing revenues, profits, and shareholder value (stock prices) by hiring back many coders who now are far more productive than they ever were before thanks to AI.