Zoho founder says AI will impact IT jobs

21-May-2025

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Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu says that AI will not only take jobs, but the salary structure of software engineers may get impacted for the worse. He emphasises that software engineers should not consider their high paychecks a guaranteed privilege in the long term.

Posting his views on X (formally twitter) Sridhar wrote “the fact that software engineers get paid better than mechanical engineers or civil engineers or chemists or school teachers is not some birthright and we cannot take that for granted, and we cannot assume it will last forever.”

Then he added, “The fact that customers pay for our products also cannot be taken for granted.”

Sridhar warns that new AI tools could result in widespread job disruption in IT sector. He pointed to the fundamental principle that customer loyalty and job security are earned and can never be assumed to be permanent. "The productivity revolution I see coming to software development (LLMs + tooling) could destroy a lot of software jobs. This is sobering but necessary to internalise," he wrote.