# “Engineers are becoming sorcerers” | The future of software development with OpenAI’s Sherwin Wu

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lenny-s-podcast/engineers-are-becoming-sorcerers-the-future-of-software-development-with-openai-s-sherwin-wu
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lenny-s-podcast/engineers-are-becoming-sorcerers-the-future-of-software-development-with-openai-s-sherwin-wu.md
Podcast: [Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth](https://stenobird.com/podcast/lenny-s-podcast)
Published: 2026-02-12T13:31:43+00:00
Episode link: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/engineers-are-becoming-sorcerers
Audio file: https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/api.substack.com/feed/podcast/186818429/20ea1f93e368d8b60c8c7110acc1ab81.mp3
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Duration seconds: 4779

## Resource

Sherwin Wu leads engineering for OpenAI’s API platform, where roughly 95% of engineers use Codex, often working with fleets of 10 to 20 parallel AI agents. We discuss: 1. What OpenAI did to cut code review times from 10-15 minutes to 2-3 minutes 2. How AI is changing the role of managers 3. Why the productivity gap between AI power users and everyone else is widening 4. Why “models will eat your scaffolding for breakfast” 5. Why the next 12 to 24 months are a rare window where engineers can leap ahead before the role fully transforms — Brought to you by: DX —The developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers Sentry —Code breaks, fix it faster Datadog —Now home to Eppo, the leading experimentation and feature flagging platform — Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/engineers-are-becoming-sorcerers — Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 — Where to find Sherwin Wu: • X: https://x.com/sherwinwu • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherwinwu1 — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Introduction to Sherwin Wu (03:10) AI’s role in coding at OpenAI (06:53) The future of software engineering with AI (12:26) The stress of managing agents (15:07) Codex and code review automation (19:29) The changing role of engineering managers (24:14) The one-person billion-dollar startup (31:40) Management lessons (37:28) Challenges and best practices in AI deployment (43:56) Hot takes on AI and customer feedback (48:57) Building for future AI capabilities (50:16)…

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## Transcript

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