Boris Cherny: Claude Code & the Future of Engineering | Acquired Unplugged presented by WorkOS

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

June 2, 2026

Duration

29m

Channel

WorkOS

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Six months ago, Boris Cherny uninstalled his IDE. He hadn't opened it in a month. Boris Cherny, Creator of Claude Code at Anthropic, joins Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, hosts of the Acquired Podcast, live on stage at Acquired Unplugged — an intimate founder event presented by WorkOS. They cover:

• How Claude Code started
• Why the step changes in output always came down to the model, not the product
• The death of the IDE and what "coding" even means now
• How Cowork was built in 8 days, entirely using Claude Code
• Why "product taste" as a human advantage is also going away

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Ben Gilbert

  host

  Co-host of Acquired; tech/business interviewer and former Microsoft employee.

• Boris Cherny

  guest

  Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic and builder of Claude Code, with prior experience in developer tools at Meta.

• David Rosenthal

  host

  Co-host of Acquired; interviewer focused on company/product strategy and engineering.

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of WorkOS, featuring Ben Gilbert and Boris Cherny, Boris Cherny: Claude Code & the Future of Engineering | Acquired Unplugged presented by WorkOS explores Boris Cherny on Claude Code, productivity, and builders replacing roles Boris Cherny said Claude Code began as an accidental-feeling prototype within Anthropic’s Labs team to build a frontier coding agent and learn how to evolve the model alongside a real product.