This founder isn’t hiring junior engineers anymore
Platformer Casey Newton
Eugenia Kuyda, founder of Replika and now Wabi, stated that AI has made hiring junior engineers unsustainable for startups because they compete with what she calls a "1,000x engineer," and believes job loss concerns are justified rather than fantasy. Wabi, which launches publicly before month's end, is designed with a soccer-team model of 10 to 15 superstar employees with sizable equity, supported by contractors, reflecting Kuyda's belief that this structure is sufficient to build billion-dollar companies. Kuyda argues the industry is in the "Microsoft DOS era of AI interfaces" and that as AI tools mature and enable rapid app creation, long-tail subscription software and traditional hiring models will be disrupted.
Why it matters
And yes, AI is a factor. Replika and Wabi founder Eugenia Kuyda on how advances in coding changed her hiring calculus
