# AI productivity can increase engineering demand

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-productivity-can-increase-engineering-demand/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Parag Agrawal](https://realalpha.app/builders/parag-agrawal/) · Parag Agrawal is founder and CEO of Parallel, former CEO of Twitter. · Founded Parallel Web Systems, which builds agentic web search for AI agents; former Twitter CEO.
- Host: [Joubin Mirzadegan](https://realalpha.app/people/joubin-mirzadegan/) · Partner, Kleiner Perkins · Took Palo Alto Networks' cloud business from $2M to $50M+ ARR in a year.
- Show: Grit
- Episode: [Ex-Twitter CEO on Why AI Needs a New Internet | Parag Agrawal](https://realalpha.app/v/2IgMbFmWbok/), Jul 27, 2026
- Moment: 18:46 to 22:38 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-productivity-can-increase-engineering-demand/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/2IgMbFmWbok/?t=1126

## Quote

> “if you have an extremely interesting set of things that you can build, which are extremely valuable, and **your customers need it**.”
> — [Parag Agrawal](https://realalpha.app/builders/parag-agrawal/) at [20:19](https://realalpha.app/v/2IgMbFmWbok/?t=1219) · Grit

## Takeaways

1. More productive teams may expose more buildable opportunities.
2. Hire while valuable work and customer demand exceed capacity.
3. Growth compounds across hiring, shipping and adoption.

## About this segment

Parag Agrawal argues that hiring can still accelerate when more productive engineers face a large backlog of valuable work. Faster building, customer adoption and team capacity compound rather than cancel out.

From “Ex-Twitter CEO on Why AI Needs a New Internet | Parag Agrawal”, Jul 27, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/2IgMbFmWbok/)

## Transcript

From the transcript Grit publishes with the episode.

[18:52](https://realalpha.app/v/2IgMbFmWbok/?t=1132) a customer wants to see the proof in the pudding of Roadrunner, they want to see it with their SKUs. They want us to do like hairy SKUs and show a demo of what it looks like. And so I asked our head of solutions architecture, how long does it take you right now to like, set up this environment? It's like hand-to-hand combat. And she's like a couple days and I'm like, what would you need to make it a couple of hours? And so just like I started like peeling back like a few whys and eventually it was like, well, I need an engineer and I need these skills that they have to do these things. And then I'm like, okay. But like, can't you just embed those skills into Claude and then start to try? By the way, you might fail, but at least start to try to automate this away, because if we have 15 customers at the same time, this isn't going to work. So like

[19:46](https://realalpha.app/v/2IgMbFmWbok/?t=1186) either we go hire another ten people or we figure out how to automate this process and we can hire three. And I think like that to me is where I'm like, yeah, let it rip. Like go, go. Because the the trade off is I have to go hire more hands and I'd prefer not to. That is interesting. Can I at least I struggle with this. I think there's this. We are hiring engineers as fast as we can. Despite all of this today. And I find that counterintuitive, but also not because if you think about it, like if you have an extremely interesting set of things that you can build, which are extremely valuable, and your customers need it. Even if each engineer is more productive, buy a lot more is better until you start saturating your opportunity space, right? So I do think what's interesting is, and I think there is an explanation for why there is a class of

[20:51](https://realalpha.app/v/2IgMbFmWbok/?t=1251) businesses growing at crazy rates. It is because you get to multiply the two effects together, which is like how fast and well can you hire and how quickly can you channel your capacity to build into really valuable things, and how fast your customers can adopt these new things that you're making available? And all of these things are multiplying together into these outrageous growth rates that we're starting to see now. And so I have never once sat down and been like, oh, Everyone's going to be so much more productive. So maybe I need fewer people. Yeah. And it's the exact opposite that you feel. Yeah, I think I agree with you, except, like, uh. So we have insatiable appetite to hire as many engineers as we can, which is. Yeah, counterintuitive. Maybe. I don't even know if it's that kind of. It's not

[21:46](https://realalpha.app/v/2IgMbFmWbok/?t=1306) counterintuitive. Yeah. It's just like, you know, you guys have the tools, you know how to use them. You know how to build more product. You have large, wide, blue oceans to go after. Uh, and yeah, like go build more. And, uh, if you know, and you've got capital, you've got all the ingredients. Yeah, yeah. You're welcome. Uh, to go build and sell and generate revenue. And which is why it goes back to the point, the, the multiplicative effects of all this are that companies are growing at rates we've never, ever seen before. And that's great. That's amazing. And so if you're not if you're not growing up those rates uh, you're a good company. Not a great company. Mhm. But don't you think there is certain types of work that, like the truly great engineers, just don't want to