Don't obsess over coding: Sridhar Vembu's advice to engineers in AI-era
Programming skills are the foundation (and we definitely don't want to lose them), but deep domain knowledge is what customers pay for, says Zoho's Sridhar Vembu
- Apr 19, 2026,
- Updated Apr 19, 2026 8:50 AM IST
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu on Sunday outlined what he calls a practical approach for software engineers to thrive in the artificial intelligence era, stressing the importance of domain expertise over pure programming output.
In a post on Sunday, Zoho said, "Here is what I tell our software engineers on how to thrive in the AI era: be very good domain experts."
He said programming remains essential but is no longer sufficient on its own. "Programming skills are the foundation (and we definitely don't want to lose them), but deep domain knowledge is what customers pay for, along with reliability, security, support, and compliance," he wrote.
Vembu said the gains from AI remain uneven across the development cycle. He said the productivity gains from AI are still hotly debated: "We definitely get to a working prototype much faster, but a finished product has a lot more to it and not all the stages can be sped up by AI."
He advised engineers to shift focus away from narrow productivity metrics. "That is why I advise our technical teams not to obsess about programmer productivity as a metric but focus on how we can offer a far better experience to customers using AI," he said.
Vembu, however, added that there is a lot of needless or incidental complexity in software that can be eliminated by AI.
His comments drew responses from engineers online, reflecting a wider debate over AI’s impact on software development.
Paul Maddison, an American software engineer, said, "Programming is only part of software engineering." He said software engineering is now done in the prompts because if you don't get your prompts right, the reasoning models will make multiple assumptions that are tough to pick up in review, especially for large code changes.
"Attention to detail is the most important skill as a software engineer, it always has been, and it is even more so now," he added.
Another user, Anotida Msiiwa, said the debate challenges claims that AI will replace developers. "This is exactly why the narrative about AI replacing all developers is so deeply flawed."
"Customers do not buy lines of code. They buy reliable solutions to highly specific industry problems. AI can write the boilerplate, but it cannot sit in a compliance meeting and explain why it wrote it. Domain knowledge is the only real moat left," Msiiwa said.
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu on Sunday outlined what he calls a practical approach for software engineers to thrive in the artificial intelligence era, stressing the importance of domain expertise over pure programming output.
In a post on Sunday, Zoho said, "Here is what I tell our software engineers on how to thrive in the AI era: be very good domain experts."
He said programming remains essential but is no longer sufficient on its own. "Programming skills are the foundation (and we definitely don't want to lose them), but deep domain knowledge is what customers pay for, along with reliability, security, support, and compliance," he wrote.
Vembu said the gains from AI remain uneven across the development cycle. He said the productivity gains from AI are still hotly debated: "We definitely get to a working prototype much faster, but a finished product has a lot more to it and not all the stages can be sped up by AI."
He advised engineers to shift focus away from narrow productivity metrics. "That is why I advise our technical teams not to obsess about programmer productivity as a metric but focus on how we can offer a far better experience to customers using AI," he said.
Vembu, however, added that there is a lot of needless or incidental complexity in software that can be eliminated by AI.
His comments drew responses from engineers online, reflecting a wider debate over AI’s impact on software development.
Paul Maddison, an American software engineer, said, "Programming is only part of software engineering." He said software engineering is now done in the prompts because if you don't get your prompts right, the reasoning models will make multiple assumptions that are tough to pick up in review, especially for large code changes.
"Attention to detail is the most important skill as a software engineer, it always has been, and it is even more so now," he added.
Another user, Anotida Msiiwa, said the debate challenges claims that AI will replace developers. "This is exactly why the narrative about AI replacing all developers is so deeply flawed."
"Customers do not buy lines of code. They buy reliable solutions to highly specific industry problems. AI can write the boilerplate, but it cannot sit in a compliance meeting and explain why it wrote it. Domain knowledge is the only real moat left," Msiiwa said.