Spotify says its best developers haven't written a line of code since December(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Spotify says its best developers haven't written a line of code since December
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/spotify-says-its-best-developers-havent-written-a-line-of-code-since-december-thanks-to-ai/
7 comments
> the best developers at the company “have not written a single line of code since December.”
Those are the best. The suckers still write code.
Those are the best. The suckers still write code.
> …How exactly are they
> measuring their best
> developers?…
____
“As a concrete example, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute…all before they even arrive at the office.”
____
> "At Spotify, engineers are using an internal system called “Honk” to speed up coding and product velocity, the company told analysts on the call. This system allows for things like remote, real-time code deployment using generative AI, and specifically Claude Code."
Fascinating...I wonder what the internal system "Honk" does vs. what Claude Code natively does. Why build an internal system at all? I found the article fairly vague on it beyond this quote; seems like CI/CD and such maybe?
Fascinating...I wonder what the internal system "Honk" does vs. what Claude Code natively does. Why build an internal system at all? I found the article fairly vague on it beyond this quote; seems like CI/CD and such maybe?
10 years from now
/v1/fetch/music
Thought for 0.000001 seconds: Hmmm, the user is asking for a list of music, it looks like that's in the the postgres database music_track.... (
All endpoints will just directly be to the LLM that has all the access control rules, etc.. No hacking will be possible. No more code it's just all ST:TNG computer from here on out.
/v1/fetch/music
Thought for 0.000001 seconds: Hmmm, the user is asking for a list of music, it looks like that's in the the postgres database music_track.... (
All endpoints will just directly be to the LLM that has all the access control rules, etc.. No hacking will be possible. No more code it's just all ST:TNG computer from here on out.
[deleted]
> an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cell phone can tell Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app [...] so that he can then merge it to production, all before they even arrive at the office.
It's so dystopian to boost about your team pushing to production on their commute because that means:
1. The engineers are forced to work from office for no reason apparently.
2. The engineers are working outside work hours. Are they compensated for that?
Most people reading the article would get the impression that the developers are no longer needed and you can just tell Claude the feature you need directly, but why are the engineers at Spotify's still employed then? It seems Spotify's shareholders should confront the co-CEO, Söderström, about wasting tremendous resources when AI is so good and doing all the heavy lifting. Unless he is bullshitting a little too much.
It's so dystopian to boost about your team pushing to production on their commute because that means:
1. The engineers are forced to work from office for no reason apparently.
2. The engineers are working outside work hours. Are they compensated for that?
Most people reading the article would get the impression that the developers are no longer needed and you can just tell Claude the feature you need directly, but why are the engineers at Spotify's still employed then? It seems Spotify's shareholders should confront the co-CEO, Söderström, about wasting tremendous resources when AI is so good and doing all the heavy lifting. Unless he is bullshitting a little too much.
How exactly are they measuring their best developers? Is "best" those with the most AI-generated code put into prod???