Meta Plans AI to Replace Midlevel Engineers by 2025, Zuckerberg Says

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to develop artificial intelligence capable of replacing midlevel software engineers by 2025, during a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. The move could significantly disrupt the tech industry and reshape the job market for coders.

“Probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer that you have at your company that can write code,” Zuckerberg said. Midlevel engineers at Meta currently earn mid-six-figure salaries, according to salary tracking data.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that the initial implementation of AI-driven coding would be costly but emphasized that efficiency would improve over time. “In the beginning, it’ll be really expensive to run, and you can get it to be more efficient,” he said. “Over time, it’ll get to the point where a lot of the code in our apps, including the AI that we generate, is actually going to be built by AI engineers instead of people engineers.”

The Meta CEO argued that AI would augment human creativity rather than eliminate jobs entirely. “My view on this is like the future people are just going to be so much more creative, and they’re going to be freed up to do kind of crazy things,” he said. However, he avoided directly addressing concerns about job displacement, instead drawing parallels to historical shifts like the Industrial Revolution.

Meta is not alone in pursuing AI-driven automation. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced in December that the company would implement a hiring freeze in 2025, citing productivity gains from AI tools like its Agentforce model. Similarly, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski revealed that the fintech company had laid off 22% of its workforce after adopting AI technologies.

The push for AI agents capable of performing complex tasks without human intervention has become a growing trend in the tech industry. Thousands of jobs have already been cut across the sector as companies invest heavily in developing advanced AI models.

Zuckerberg’s announcement comes amid a series of changes at Meta, including plans to reintroduce political content and discontinue its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team. These moves have sparked criticism from fact-checking organizations and advocacy groups, who argue that the changes could undermine the company’s commitment to responsible content moderation.