Affirm CEO Levchin Recommends Major in Computer Science
Affirm CEO Max Levchin stated that now is a great time to major in computer science.
If you can deeply understand the principles of software construction and become a "10,000x engineer," your value will outweigh gold; deep expertise is extremely powerful today.
Market Mechanism: Levchin, as a tech company CEO, publicly guides educational choices, driving excellent students into the field of computer science, with funding directed towards top CS talent development, AI/software company recruitment, and educational investment; deep CS talent and tech companies benefit, while students studying other majors face pressure in the AI era.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Max Levchin, as a co-founder of PayPal and CEO of Affirm, has long witnessed the value transition of tech talent from the early internet to the AI era. His statement continues his long-standing preference for "deep specialists" over generalists, having emphasized in public that those who truly understand underlying principles are irreplaceable in technological iterations.
In terms of capital pathways, tech companies are attracting top CS talent through high salaries and equity, concentrating resources on deep engineers who can manage complex systems and AI agents. The motivation is that in the context of AI agents replacing routine jobs on a large scale, only those who truly understand software construction can design, supervise, and surpass AI systems, creating a new barrier for scarce talent.
Similar cases include Silicon Valley's pursuit of deep mobile engineers during the mobile internet era and the current fierce competition among AI companies for top research talent. The tech industry is currently at a critical stage of filtering talent from "knowing how to use AI" to "understanding the underlying construction of AI."
Structural Judgment: This essentially belongs to an industrial chain reconstruction driven by technological substitution. AI agents take on a large amount of routine work, shifting the pricing power of talent from broad generalists to deep computer science experts. The mechanism is that only those who deeply understand software construction principles can create, optimize, and control AI systems, forcing educational capital and individual career choices from broad specialties to high-barrier deep fields, accelerating the structural differentiation of the labor market from replaceable roles to irreplaceable experts.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
The more capable AI becomes, the more valuable those who understand how to create AI are.
The deeper the expertise, the more evident the 10,000x value.
The era eliminates generalists and rewards those who truly understand the fundamentals.