Electric Capital Partner: The future will be an era of small, efficient teams, and AI-first companies will dominate the market

Odaily News Avichal, partner of Electric Capital, said on social media that the "golden age" of software engineers in San Francisco has ended. From 2000 to 2020, software engineers were the representatives of high-paying professions, but with more than 100,000 layoffs in the technology industry in 2024, the globalization of remote work, and the rapid development of AI technology, the wealth path of this profession has changed fundamentally. He compared the rise of ChatGPT to the "2008 moment" in the field of software engineering, which changed the market landscape. However, Avichal pointed out that it is not all bad news. The future will be an era of small and efficient teams, and AI-driven efficiency improvements will give birth to more billion-dollar companies built by teams of 10. AI-first companies will dominate the market, and designers, product managers, and domain experts will have unprecedented influence, driving the rise of a new generation of entrepreneurs. He predicts that as the cost of software production further decreases, the enterprise software industry will undergo profound changes, and the era of "easy money" for ordinary software engineers has ended, and the new San Francisco "gold rush" has quietly begun.