• Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger discussed the evolving job of software engineers in a podcast interview.
• He said the day-to-day work will change as AI gets better at coding.
• Krieger, who now works at Anthropic, predicts software engineers will spend more time reviewing code than writing it.

Software engineers should expect their jobs to meaningfully change in the next three years, according to Instagram's cofounder.

Mike Krieger, who now works as Anthropic's chief product officer, said in a recent podcast interview that developers will be spending more time double-checking AI-generated code than writing it themselves.

"How do we evolve from being mostly code writers to mostly delegators to the models and code reviewers?" Krieger asked on a recent episode of "20VC."

As the act of coding itself increasingly involves artificial intelligence, Krieger expects software developers to tackle the more abstract work that AI models can't handle and learn how to effectively oversee the systems themselves.

"That's what I think the work looks like three years from now," Krieger said. "It's coming up with the right ideas, doing the right user interaction design, figuring out how to delegate work correctly, and then figuring out how to review things at scale — and that's probably some combination of maybe a comeback of some static analysis or maybe AI-driven analysis tools of what was actually produced."

At certain Big Tech companies, the work of software development has already undergone significant change.

In October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said over a quarter of new code at the company was already being produced by AI. Besides using it to write some code himself, Krieger said he began the year at Anthropic by determining what parts of the product development process were "Claude-ified," and which others remained best left up to human beings.

"Driving alignment and actually figuring out what to build is still the hardest part, right," Krieger said. "Like that is actually the only thing that is still best resolved by just getting together in a room and talking through the pros and cons, or going off and exploring it in Figma and coming back."

Though AI may speed along certain parts of the process for product development, Krieger doesn't expect it to entirely eliminate the need for software developers — a worry that is top of mind for some computer science majors and recent graduates who previously spoke with Business Insider.

Krieger said AI will instead alter the skills required to remain relevant in a coding-related job.

"I think it becomes multidisciplinary, where it's knowing what to build as much as it is knowing the exact implementation that you want," Krieger said. "I love that about our engineers. Many, maybe even most, of our good product ideas come from our engineers and come from them prototyping, and I think that's what the role ends up looking like for a lot of them."

A spokesperson for Anthropic told Business Insider that the company views itself as a "testbed" for how other workplaces can navigate AI-driven changes to critical roles.

"At Anthropic, we're focused on developing powerful and responsible AI that works with people, not in place of them," the spokesperson said. "As Claude rapidly advances in its coding capabilities for real-world tasks, we're observing developers gradually shifting toward higher-level responsibilities."

Certain jobs, Krieger said, are still most efficient when performed by human hands — for the time being.

"And I think alignment: Deciding what to build, solving real user problems, and like figuring out a cohesive product strategy — still very hard," he said. "And probably the models are more than a year away from solving that. That is the constraint."