Cory O'Daniel: Will AI Fix the Cloud Skills Crisis?

Cory O'Daniel is the CEO and co-founder of Massdriver and a co-founder of OpenTofu. We spoke about the growing skills crisis in cloud operations, the limitations of AI in solving it, and how companies can bridge the gap between software development and infrastructure management.

Cory warns of an impending "existential crisis" in cloud expertise: "There is not a ton of people that understand how to use the cloud… and a lot of people are banking on AI solving it." But the problem, he explains, is that AI isn’t trained on the real, private complexities of cloud operations—it only learns from public code snapshots. This means that businesses are moving more of their infrastructure to the cloud with fewer people who actually know how to secure, optimize, and manage it.

The discussion highlights a stark reality: while the number of software developers is projected to increase from 27 million to 45 million by 2030, "the amount of people that have experience in cloud operations… decreases every year." Cory points out that cloud management isn't something you learn in a coding boot camp, yet it's essential for running modern businesses securely and efficiently.

We also explored the resurgence of Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions and why developers are shifting toward tools that "dumb it down" and remove the complexity of cloud operations. But for enterprises too large or complex to rely on PaaS, companies need better collaboration between developers and operations teams—without forcing developers to become cloud experts.

Key takeaways:

• The Cloud Skills Crisis is Real: While software development is booming, expertise in running cloud infrastructure is vanishing.
• AI Won’t Save Us: "AI is not going to help us here… It might make somebody who knows what they're doing more efficient, but it's not going to make somebody who doesn’t know what they're doing know what they're doing."
• PaaS is Making a Comeback: More developers are choosing abstraction layers over direct cloud management, but this isn’t a solution for every business.
• Collaboration is Key: Cory emphasizes that "DevOps was never really about one person doing another person's job—it was about teams working together better."

Cory’s perspective challenges the conventional wisdom around AI and automation, making this conversation a must-listen for anyone navigating the future of cloud infrastructure.