GitLab shares dive as death-of-human-coding theme strengthens
Shares of software development service GitLab tumbled Wednesday after lackluster guidance undermined an otherwise solid set of Q4 results.
The hard numbers, however, may be less important for the shares than the hardening narrative entombing the company, whose stock price is down roughly 60% over the last year, at last glance.
In short, the problem is that GitLab sells coding and software development services long used by human coders and software developers. And investors think rapid advances in AI coding, through programs like Claude Code, mean there will be far fewer flesh-and-blood programmers to use GitLab in the future.
To wit, this report from The Information notes that OpenAI is developing an alternative to Microsoft’s GitHub — not to be confused with GitLab, an independent company, though both offer similar services such as code repositories and collaborative software development tools.
For sure, it’s not clear that human coders are destined for the dustbin of history. But it does seem fairly obvious that far fewer will be needed.
As I’ve written recently, that makes the AI boom somewhat distinct from other recent tech frenzies, in which programmers were typically insulated from the job losses their work often unleashes.
In short, the problem is that GitLab sells coding and software development services long used by human coders and software developers. And investors think rapid advances in AI coding, through programs like Claude Code, mean there will be far fewer flesh-and-blood programmers to use GitLab in the future.
To wit, this report from The Information notes that OpenAI is developing an alternative to Microsoft’s GitHub — not to be confused with GitLab, an independent company, though both offer similar services such as code repositories and collaborative software development tools.
For sure, it’s not clear that human coders are destined for the dustbin of history. But it does seem fairly obvious that far fewer will be needed.
As I’ve written recently, that makes the AI boom somewhat distinct from other recent tech frenzies, in which programmers were typically insulated from the job losses their work often unleashes.
