"We will never write code by hand again,” says former Meta engineer Aditya Agarwal as AI fuels market jitters

Global software stocks fell on February 3 as investors reacted to growing fears that artificial intelligence (AI) is moving faster than expected into white-collar work, a shift that Silicon Valley veteran Aditya Agarwal says is already reshaping how he views his own career.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Agarwal, now a general partner at South Park Commons, described a mix of excitement and unease after spending hours coding with AI.

“It’s a weird time. I am filled with wonder and also a profound sadness,” Agarwal wrote. “I spent a lot of time over the weekend writing code with Claude. And it was very clear that we will never ever write code by hand again. It doesn’t make any sense to do so.”

Agarwal previously held senior engineering roles at Dropbox and Meta, and also served as a director at Flipkart. He said skills that once defined his career now feel suddenly commoditised.

Also read: Explained: Why Anthropic’s new AI tool is spooking India’s IT services industry

“Something I was very good at is now free and abundant. I am happy…but disoriented,” he wrote.

He also reflected on watching AI recreate the very products he helped build.

“Something I spent my early career building (social networks) was being created by lobster-agents,” Agarwal said. From a distance, he added, it is “kind of indistinguishable from humans on the larger internet.”

“So both the form and function of my early career are now produced by AI,” he wrote. “I am happy but also sad and confused. If anything, this whole period is showing me what it is like to be human again.”

His comments come as markets reacted sharply to a new automation push from Anthropic, which recently expanded its enterprise offering with a suite of plug-ins designed to automate work across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis. The tools allow companies to connect AI directly with email, calendars, knowledge bases and project trackers, enabling agents to plan tasks, generate documents and manage workflows with minimal human input.

Also read: Anthropic AI tool impact: Infosys shares suffer biggest fall in more than 2 years

In India, by the close of trade on February 4, Infosys shares declined 7.19% to settle at Rs 1,535.90, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd ended at Rs 2,999.80, down 6.95%, while HCL Technologies Ltd fell 4.22% to Rs 1,622.30. Wipro declined 3.73%, and Tech Mahindra Ltd dropped 4.12%.

American depositary receipts of Infosys slid 5.56% overnight, while Wipro ADRs fell 4.83%. Broader markets also weakened, with the Nasdaq Composite down 1.43% and the S&P 500 falling 0.84%.

Anthropic says companies can customise its plug-ins to match their own workflows, letting employees build and share tools internally without deep technical expertise. In practical terms, that means AI can now help manage schedules, draft product documents, plan marketing campaigns, run enterprise search and support finance, customer service and data analysis.