When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posts a job call on X, the tech world listens. In a tweet that drew widespread attention, Altman appealed to engineers passionate about building large-scale computing systems.

The timing wasn’t random. ChatGPT’s user base has recently exploded, doubling within a week and reportedly nearing the one billion mark. That’s almost 10% of the planet – an astonishing feat for a product that didn’t exist three years ago.

Altman described the scale of operations at OpenAI as “insane,” urging infrastructure experts to consider joining the mission. “We could desperately use your help,” he wrote.

The call underscores OpenAI’s growing operational load as it pushes the boundaries of artificial intelligence, particularly in generative capabilities like image and video synthesis.

One such feature – a Ghibli-inspired visual mode – helped attract a million users in just one hour on 31 March.

During a TED interview, Altman admitted the user count was expanding at breakneck speed, estimating around 800 million weekly active users. “Something like 10% of the world uses our systems now, a lot,” he said, signalling just how quickly AI is becoming embedded in everyday life.

Read: Musk vs OpenAI: Who pays the price?

The rise of the AI co-pilot

But beneath the buzz and bravado lies a quieter disruption – one that is redrawing the employment map in software engineering. In a series of recent comments and blog posts, Altman laid out his vision for the role of AI in development, and it’s as thrilling as it is unnerving.

Once upon a time, coding skills offered a golden ticket to upward mobility. Today, it’s AI fluency that holds the keys.

“The obvious tactical thing is just getting really good at using AI tools,” Altman advised, reflecting on the shifting landscape. He contrasted this with the early 2000s when a solid grasp of syntax and frameworks gave developers an edge. Now, AI-enhanced productivity is the new currency.

He didn’t mince words on what’s coming next. In many firms, over 50% of the code is already being written by AI. More disruptive still is the advent of “agentic coding” – AI systems that autonomously perform complex tasks without continuous human direction. While Altman acknowledged no one has perfected this yet, it’s clearly in the pipeline.

And he’s not alone in sounding the trumpet. Dario Amodei of Anthropic boldly predicted that AI will be writing all software code within a year.

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg echoed similar sentiments on the Joe Rogan podcast earlier this year, noting that AI would soon generate a significant chunk of their application code.

Read: OpenAI wants to use copyrighted work

The end of the junior engineer?

Altman’s prognosis has major implications for HR and workforce strategy, particularly in regions with tech-heavy talent pipelines like India.

In February, OpenAI began rolling out AI agents designed to perform tasks typically handled by junior engineers. These agents, Altman explained, will soon be capable of executing projects that would normally take a mid-level engineer a couple of days. However, they will still need human supervision, especially for high-level planning and quality control.

“Imagine that this agent will eventually be capable of doing most things a software engineer at a top company with a few years of experience could do,” he wrote in a blog post.

“It will not have the biggest new ideas, it will require lots of human supervision and direction, and it will be great at some things but surprisingly bad at others.”

This blend of promise and imperfection means that while AI may not fully replace engineers just yet, it will inevitably change the nature of their work. Tasks that were once considered essential junior-level responsibilities may soon be outsourced to AI co-pilots, nudging organisations to rethink their hiring models.

IT firms, in particular, are already seeing the ripple effects. Headcount reductions in recent quarters have largely been attributed to sluggish demand due to macroeconomic volatility, but automation is clearly playing a growing role. With GenAI tools increasingly becoming standard issue, the urgency to hire in bulk is fading.

The evolving equation of human + machine

Yet, it’s not all doom and gloom. Many executives believe that AI won’t erase jobs – it will redefine them. As code-writing becomes commoditised, human oversight will become more important than ever. AI can accelerate development, but it still needs guardrails. In that sense, engineers may find themselves moving from keystrokes to quality control, from writing functions to shaping the bigger picture.

The takeaway for HR and business leaders: it’s time to look beyond conventional hiring metrics and consider how AI integration will reshape team roles, workflows, and skill requirements.

OpenAI’s hiring blitz is a sign of tectonic shifts across tech, talent, and the workplace. Like it or not, the future is arriving faster than anyone planned. And in Altman’s words, the challenges ahead are “very hard” and “very interesting”.