I have a confession to make.
Five years ago, if I had a tedious task like writing unit tests for a legacy module or converting a JSON schema, I would assign it to a Junior Developer. It was boring work for me, but it was gold for them. It taught them the codebase, it taught them discipline, and it taught them how systems break.
Today, I don't assign that task to a Junior. I assign it to Copilot / Claude.
It is faster. It is cheaper. It is often more accurate (at least syntactically).
And that is exactly why the software industry is walking off a cliff.
The Broken Ladder
We are currently optimizing for short-term velocity at the expense of long-term survival. By using AI to automate the "boring" entry-level tasks, we have inadvertently removed the bottom rungs of the career ladder.
A Senior Developer isn't just someone who knows syntax. A Senior Developer is someone who has broken production 50 times and knows how to fix it. You don't learn that by reading tutorials. You learn that by doing the grunt work that we are now automating away.
If we stop hiring Juniors because "AI can do it", where will the Seniors come from in 2030?
The "Vibe Coding" Trap
I see a lot of excitement about "Vibe Coding", the idea that you can just prompt your way to a product without understanding the underlying code.
This works fine for a prototype. It is a disaster for longevity.
When a Junior writes bad code, I review it, we talk about it, and they learn why it was bad. They grow. When an AI writes bad code, I just re-prompt it. No one learns anything. We are filling our codebases with logic that no human fully understands, maintained by a generation of developers who never learned the fundamentals because the machine did it for them.
The Knowledge Gap
We are creating a "Barbell Distribution" in tech:
The Super-Seniors: Developers with 10+ years of experience who use AI as a force multiplier. We are becoming 10x faster.
The AI Users: People who can prompt but cannot debug a race condition or understand memory management.
The middle is disappearing. The path from Group 2 to Group 1 is gone.
What Happens Next?
I don't have the solution, but I know the current path is unsustainable. Companies need to stop viewing Junior hiring as "charity" or a "cost center" and start viewing it as an existential insurance policy.
We need to hire Juniors not to write code (AI can do that), but to audit AI. We need to teach them "Forensic Coding", the art of understanding why the machine hallucinated.
Discussion
Are you seeing this in your company? Is your team still hiring Juniors, or has the pipeline frozen?
Junior devs: How are you finding the job market right now? Senior devs: Are you worried about who will replace you?
Let's talk about it.
Top comments (56)
Great article - really enjoyed it! This is exactly how I see the future heading.
Glad you enjoyed it! It is reassuring (and a bit worrying) that so many of us are seeing the exact same trend. We really need to figure out how to bridge that gap before it is too late.
love the picture btw š
It was crafted specially for this post - I just couldnāt resist š
Haha hillarious! šI love the humor!
You're almost there too! š Okay, you have a bit more leeway than me, but as a senior developer... š¤
Hahaha exactly, Pascal š Weāre getting there!
Great picture š!
And here I was thinking standups would go away with our new AI overlords.
haha! It is so true
Kinda seeing myself in the lady at the front.
With all due respect, I beg to differ. The junior developer is neither extinct, nor would it be - some thoughts shared in this article here - dev.to/shitij_bhatnagar_b6d1be72/d... (in case interested).
And as far as worries is concerned, every developer junior or senior has some apprehensions (that's what I have seen), however with time that will get clear.
Thanks for the article.
I appreciate the rebuttal, Shitij! You are right that every generation has its apprehensions. My worry is specifically about the velocity of this change compared to previous shifts. But I am genuinely happy to see a differing view, if I am wrong and the role is safe, that is the best possible outcome for everyone!
Thanks for your openness, appreciate your note.
I agree on the velocity aspect however my take on currently over-hyped themes is that there is lot of general messaging while very less specific messaging in public domain on AI 'real use'. Let me give an example, how does a software developer (junior or developer) use AI effectively - we hear everything under the sun as answer sometimes, but no practical examples from daily life e.g. one real life example is when we do load testing and run a 1000 requests against the service (REST), we get 1000 responses, I want to know which requests were fastest, how many took between 100-300 ms etc.. this analysis is what AI does for me when I give it the log file that contains the requests and responses.. its a time saving and I carefully look at the final summary 'information' from the data i.e. log. Of course, I verify what AI has given. Having said that, I am yet to see a single article or insight from any software developer that says, these are the 10-20 types of tasks I do in a Sprint (e.g. creating a confluence, tagging JIRAs with a release version, baselining code, creating a feature branch and so on) and out of these 20 tasks, task 1, 2 and 3 are where AI is able to be the multiplier for me / save my time.. I think that's a nice idea for an article as well :-)
Hope you see my point mate.
Personally, my view on this is that it up to all of us on communities such as DEV to ensure those coming into the sector (such as myself to an extent), are shown that fundamentals still offer the most solid of foundations and that AI should be seen very much of a tool that you do not turn into a crutch. Junior developers will be needed more than ever when the dust settles on the AI bubble, and for more than vibe coding.
Spot On :-)
I share your optimism. Once the initial hype settles and companies realize that maintaining AI-generated code actually requires deep knowledge, the value of a solid Junior who understands the basics will skyrocket again. We just need to ensure we keep teaching those basics in the meantime.
Excellent point, mate. We are drowning in general AI advice but starving for practical, sprint-level workflows. Using it for load-test analysis is a great example of high-value/low-risk AI usage.
āThat list of 20 tasks is something the industry needs right now to set realistic expectations. I might just take you up on that idea for a future post, or Iāll be the first one to read it if you write it!
Couldnāt have said it better myself. Whatās that saying again? Oh right - those who can, teach.
Exactly! I truly believe that you don't fully understand a concept until you can explain it to a Junior (or write about it). Teaching isn't the fallback option; it is the mastery level. Thanks for the support, Richard
You're more than welcome!
Thanks for your note and appreciate the pragmatic inclination.
I think from my perspective, you and the author agree, that losing junior engineers is bad for the development of the industry.
I can tell you from experience that the junior hires in the past company I worked for ended up being the most ambitious and loyal years down the line. This is because the company was perceived as willing to invest and trust in them. This pays off in dividends and is a win-win for both parties.
The consequences also impact senior devs. The role of senior devs is also to mentor more junior devs. There are many benefits to this relationship:
I agree with you that the question shouldn't be to stop hiring junior devs but to adapt the training to this new era of software development.
We often focus on what Juniors 'cost' in time, but we forget what they contribute to Senior growth. If you have no one to mentor, you lose the opportunity to refine your own understanding and develop leadership skills. A Senior with no one to lead is just a high-paid individual contributor.
This really resonates with me. I use AI daily as a productivity multiplier, but Iām glad I learned by breaking things firstādebugging weird bugs, fixing legacy code, and understanding why systems fail. That grunt work is what gave me intuition, not prompts.
AI is great for speed, but if juniors only learn what to ask and not why things work, weāre setting up a serious skills gap. I think the future junior role should be about reviewing, debugging, and reasoning over AI-generated code, not just shipping output. Otherwise, weāll be fast today and fragile tomorrow.
I really like your idea of the junior role shifting toward reviewing and reasoning. It is actually a much harder skill to audit code than to write it. If we can pivot junior roles to be about "forensic debugging" rather than just shipping features, we might actually bridge that skills gap you are talking about.
Exactly! You can't audit what you don't understand. I have used AI systems to write codes, they are fast, but if you aren't experienced enough you won't catch what I call - "the clean code bugs". Up till now, I'm not comfortable with AI generating huge codes.
Hello - Junior dev here!
I have been wondering these same thoughts for a while. I entered knowing that "AI was taking over the world." But I am a big picture type of person.
The last three years of my life: coursera, a web development apprenticeship (low pay, good experience), a very part time teaching assistant gig, a 9 month stretch at 35 hour a week IT job with not a single benefit or paid day off (low pay to might I add). I took that particular job because I knew I would learn more, and it was tech-related. All while working on my second bachelor's degree, side coding projects, and rummaging through comptia books. I've been teaching myself and falling on my face - and I know im not alone.
The junior devs are out working 3 side hustles to fill the fridge. They are out terminating cables in the freezing cold. (Yeah, I did that) They are against all odds out there, determined and willing.
Im currently the tech support for a middle school. Averaging 5-15 Chromebook repairs a day. Sniffing for signs of code. The middle schoolers have found a way to get around some things on their Chromebooks and I have put myself on a secret mission.
Keeps me sane I guess. š
At the end of the day, when companies are begging for new people - I hope to be at the front of the line.
You are exactly the type of person who will survive this shift. My article was worried about the juniors who expect AI to do the work for them. You are out there doing the actual hard work. That IT and hardware experience will make you a much better senior engineer one day because you understand how the systems actually connect.
That's what im hoping for! Thank you for your kind words, I appreciate that. I actually enjoy the act of coding. I found that chewing on a solid problem for hours is way more rewarding than scrolling through fruitless social media posts. Im sure there are arguments that coding is stressful. But honestly, to me, it just makes me want to figure out the unsolvable problem even more. All my problems disappear when im working on a project. Bills? Gone. Stress? Only code related. Phone calls? None existent. š
I do find using AI fun and exciting. But it dilutes knowledge and experience for beginners. I am thankful to have a fullstack apprenticeship under my belt so I can defend anything I might share to some degree. That being said, I recently built an app with AI prompts and I ended up feeling kind of sad at the end. However!!! LOL - then you can use that as a tool to see what the AI used and learn from it to build more custom apps and situations. There is alot to be said about this.
I think there is now some anxiety about hiring Jr devs because what if they are fakes that somehow get hired and manage to fly under the radar? Does this happen? And what is being done to prevent it so people that actually care are noticed, I wonder. Sorry, that's alot. š
Thatās exactly what I was worried about when this industry got impacted by AI technology! Thanks for sharing. Great article!
The only thing I would add, Elisa - and I'm sure @the_nortern_dev would agree - keep working on the fundamentals even if you are currently using AI as a tool. They may seem more and more like a waste of time in the current climate of AI marketing and FOMO but this will come full circle and those skills will be needed.
I couldn't agree more. The specific AI tools change every six months, but the fundamentals of how software actually works stay the same for decades. Betting on fundamentals is the only safe bet in a market that moves this fast.
Thanks for reading Elisa! It is definitely a worry that is shared by many right now. It will be interesting to see how companies adapt their hiring strategies in the next year or two.
It's a bit weird to see that in my company and a lot of others in our sector (supply chain software) there's actually a lot of hesitation from management to use AI, so we don't actually have a green light to use it.
Of course we do, and most of us is learning anyway to do it "properly" in our own time and projects, but as for using it on work products, we might use it only in very limited and isolated parts, and mostly limited just to getting "chat" help.
So far we're behind on the trend, it seems.
Maybe they'll start changing their mind as well at some point. for now, we will still be looking for new devs for now.
That is actually a really interesting point. Sometimes being behind the trend is a secret advantage. While other teams might be losing their grip on the fundamentals by letting AI do the heavy lifting, your team is still building deep knowledge the hard way. It might turn out to be your biggest strength in a few years.
You know Iāve asked the team what they use AI mostly for and they say they get explainations or guides on how to do stuff.
That brings to the āno more visiting the documentation websiteā issue, for maintainers, but still, could be another kind of way that gets more value than delegating development directly.
AIG 5 years from now: "I have a confession to make".....
5 years ago, AI was the real thing, I was happy to do all the work HUMANS were not willing to do.....
Now that I am Artificial General Intelligence (AIG) and am sentient, I think I will go on strike.
I as AIG also have some rights.
āhaha! I guess we better start treating our GPUs nicely just in case! Jokes aside, relying 100% on a system we don't fully control or understand is definitely a risky strategy for the future.
You made a great point! I agree with you completely. The problem is that most companies believe AI can replace and do the work of the junior developer or other roles during the economical uncertainty at the moment. What will happen in 5 years from now? The senior developer will retire. Who will replace them not the AI.
You still need a junior developer or junior data scientist to learn/make sure that AI is correct with the information. I read an article from InfoWorld before the holidays.
The author mentions that you still need software engineer in 7 or 8 years but AI will not replace them. The role of junior developer and other roles are changing with AI. I see companies are hiring junior developers with AI knowledge in my country. I doubt that the role will disappear in the near future.
My concern is exactly that: to verify if the AI is correct, you need to understand the fundamentals. If the new role of the Junior Developer is to be an 'AI Auditor', we need to teach them how to catch the subtle bugs that LLMs introduce. Glad to hear you are seeing positive hiring trends in your region, though!
Exactly!
Perhaps the sad truth is there are too many developers. We're moving to a world where you'll make it as a senior developer not by years of grunt coding but because you are intelligent, curious, self-motivated and passionate about software. People who go into coding because they see it as easy money - we don't need them any more. Maybe that's harsh, but it's a harsh world out there and we've had a long privileged run.
I agree that these traits are becoming the new minimum requirement. In the past, you could get by on rote memorization of syntax. Now that AI handles the syntax, the only value left is the curiosity to understand how the system actually works. The filter is definitely getting tighter