There’s a particular kind of compliment that makes you feel uneasy. Sam Altman delivered a perfect one yesterday. The OpenAI CEO posted a short tribute on X to the programmers who built the modern software stack, the ones who wrote complex systems character by character, line by painstaking line, before AI could do any of it for them.
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It’s a lovely sentiment. It’s also being delivered by the man whose company is most aggressively working to ensure that kind of effort is never required again. The replies were not kind but some were funny. Developers, which is the precise demographic Altman was seemingly honouring, pointed out that software engineering has been one of the hardest-hit professions in the AI disruption wave. Job postings are down. Junior roles are disappearing. The tools Altman’s company builds are the ones hiring managers now cite when they explain why they don’t need as many engineers. “You’re welcome,” one commenter wrote. “Nice to know that our reward is our jobs being taken away.”
Others drew the comparison that Altman conspicuously didn’t. “Also thank the artists who painted complex images stroke by stroke,” came one reply. “It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took.” The parallel is uncomfortable because it’s exact. The logic Altman applied to coders is indistinguishable from the logic applied to every creative field AI has already consumed.
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What makes the tweet sting isn’t that it’s insincere because it might be entirely genuine. What makes it sting is the past tense. It already feels difficult to remember. That’s not a tribute. That’s a eulogy. Altman isn’t saying coders are valuable. He’s saying they were valuable and expressing gratitude that their accumulated labour now lives inside his models.
There’s a stock villain trope where the antagonist thanks the hero for making everything possible just before the credits roll. Altman’s tweet has that energy. Warm,reflective and delivered from a position of total victory. The coders who built the internet deserve their flowers. They probably just didn’t picture them arriving in this particular arrangement.
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Vyom Ramani
A journalist with a soft spot for tech, games, and things that go beep. While waiting for a delayed metro or rebooting his brain, you’ll find him solving Rubik’s Cubes, bingeing F1, or hunting for the next great snack. View Full Profile
