Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu warns coders to seek alternative careers amid AI boom
Sridhar Vembu's advice to coders comes as Anthropic’s new tools spark fears of disruption in IT services and entry‑level coding jobs
Amid discussions over the impact of the boom in AI, Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu on Friday (February 6) alerted coders to look for alternate career options in a X post.
The post comes days after Indian and global IT stocks slumped nearly 7 per cent after Anthropic unveiled new tools that raised concerns over potential AI-driven disruption in the data and professional services industry.
Vembu started the online conversation after a user posted on the social media platform that he built a Bhagavad Gita app, the 10 Minute Gita, with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Reacting to the post by the X user Anish Moonka, Vembu wrote, “The quoted post is a Bhagwad Gita app. Anthropic has built an entire C compiler with their Claude AI. That is not an easy engineering feat at all.”
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"At this point, it is best for those of us who depend on writing code for a living to start considering alternative livelihoods. I include myself in this. I don't say this in panic, but with calm acceptance and embrace," he added.
App built with AI
Moonka, a former Chief of Staff at Hike, posted that he built the '10 Minute Gita' app after he couldn’t find any app online that helped him in reading the Gita every day. Mentioning the breakdown of cost involved in building the iOS app, he added that the app was built with Anthropic’s Claude code.
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New plugin tool
On January 26, Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, wrote how AI is changing faster than anyone expected. And on January 30, Anthropic launched a new plugin tool under its Claude Cowork setup, designed to automate functions in legal, sales, marketing, and data analysis.
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According to experts, Anthropic’s advanced AI systems also threaten entry‑level talent pool at Indian IT firms by replacing routine development and testing tasks.
The AI revolution
Against this backdrop, Vembu said he held a detailed conversation with Google’s Gemini chatbot on how the AI revolution may transform the global economy. He shared excerpts of the exchange, in which he discussed the contours of a post-labour society and asked the AI to assess its own work.
"It was like having an extremely intelligent economic philosopher debating you. I asked it to critique its own work and it did a fantastic job too."
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Drawing from his conversation with the chatbot, Vembu said the future could take two paths, shaped by who owns the technology and controls the rents it generates. In the best-case scenario, technology would fade into the background of everyday life, freeing people to focus on family, nature, culture, art, music, sports and faith.