AI has raised Google’s engineering velocity by 10%

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:30:42

   the holy grail if you get this right i think it allows more people uh to find that i have to ask you on the programming front uh ai is getting really good at programming gem and i both the agentic and just the llm has been incredible so a lot of programmers are really worried that their jobs they will lose their jobs uh how worried should they be and how should they adjust so they can be thriving in this new world where more and more code is written by ai I think a few things, looking at Google, you know, we've given various stats around like, you know, 30% of code now uses like AI generated suggestions or whatever it is.

2. 1:31:27

   But the most important metric, and we carefully measure it, is like, how much has our engineering velocity increased as a company due to AI, right? And it's like tough to measure, and we kind of rigorously try to measure it. And our estimates are that number is now at 10%, right? Like now, across the company, we've accomplished a 10% engineering velocity increase using AI. but we plan to hire engineers more engineers next year right so because the opportunity space of what we can do is expanding too right and so i think hopefully you know for at least in the near to midterm for many engineers it frees up more and more of the you know even in engineering and coding, there are aspects which are so much fun.

3. 1:32:28

   You're designing, you're architecting, you're solving a problem. There's a lot of grunt work, you know, which all goes hand in hand. But it hopefully takes a lot of that away, makes it even more fun to code, frees you up more time to create, problem solve, brainstorm with your fellow colleagues and so on, right? So that's the opportunity there. And second, I think, like, you know, it'll attract. It'll put the creative power in more people's hands, which means people will create more.

4. 1:33:01

   That means there'll be more engineers doing more things. So it's tough to fully predict. But, you know, I think in general, in this moment, it feels like, you know, people adopt these tools and be better programmers. Like there are more people playing chess now than ever before. Right. So, you know, it feels positive that way to me, at least speaking from within a Google context, is how I would, you know, talk to them about it.

5. 1:33:31

   I still, I just know anecdotally, a lot of great programmers are generating a lot of code. So their productivity, they're not always using all the code, just, you know, there's still a lot of editing. but like even for me programming is a side thing i think i'm like 5x more productive i don't i think that's uh even for a large code base that's touching a lot of users like google's does i'm imagining like very soon that productivity should be going up even more the big unlock will be as we make the agent capabilities much more robust right i think that's what unlocks that next big wave.

6. 1:34:13

   I think the 10% is like a massive number. Like, you know, if tomorrow, like I showed up and said, But, like, you can improve, like, a large organization's productivity by 10% when you have tens of thousands of engineers. That's a phenomenal number. And, you know, that's different than what others cite a statistic saying, like, you know, like, this percentage of code is now written by AI. I'm talking more about, like, overall.

7. 1:34:37

   Actual productivity. Actual productivity, right? Engineering productivity, which is two different things, and which is the more important metric. and but i think it'll get better right and like you know uh i think there's no engineer who tomorrow if you magically became 2x more productive you're just going to create more things you're going to create more value-added things and so i think they you'll you'll find more satisfaction in your job right so and there's a lot of aspects i mean the actual google code base might just improve because it'll become more standardized more um easier for people to move about the code base because AI will help with that.

8. 1:35:14

   And therefore, that will also allow the AI to understand the entire code base better, which makes the engineering aspect. That's what I've been using Cursor a lot as a way to program with Gemini and other models. It's like one of its powerful things is it's aware of the entire code base. And that allows you to ask questions of it. It allows the agents to move about that code base in a really powerful way.

9. 1:35:38

   I mean, that's a huge unlock. Think about, like, you know, migrations, refactoring old coal bases. Refactoring, yeah. Yeah, I mean, think about, like, you know, once we can do all this in a much better, more robust way than where we are today. I think in the end, everything will be written in JavaScript and run in Chrome. I think it's all going to that direction. I mean, just for fun, Google has legendary coding interviews, like rigorous interviews for the engineers.

10. 1:36:09

    Can you comment on how that has changed in the era of AI? It's just such a weird, you know, the whiteboard interview, I assume, is not allowed to have some prompts. Such a good question. Look, I do think, you know, we're making sure, you know, we'll introduce at least one round of in-person interviews for people just to make sure the fundamentals are there. I think they'll end up being important. But it's an equally important skill. Look, if you can use these tools to generate better code, like, you know, I think I think that's an asset. And so, you know, I think so overall, I think it's a it's a massive positive vibe coding engineer. Do you recommend people, students interested in programming still get an education in computer science and college education? What do you think?