But then people who work in actual tech companies come in and explicitly say they are not hiring any juniors anymore specifically because AI is good enough to do most of what juniors do, and that senior engineers can now write 3x as much code, etc.
There seems to be a desire for a narrative that AI really just can't replace productive work, and that it's all a mirage. However it seems just like common sense that if an AI can do junior-engineer-level coding work, that a company has less reason to hire a junior engineer.
https://www.employamerica.org/labor-market-analysis/dont-bla...
The New York Fed has also released some research suggesting remote work has been a major factor differentially affecting early career workers.
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/06/remote...
"But then people who work in actual tech companies come in and explicitly say they are not hiring any juniors anymore specifically because AI is good enough to do most of what juniors do, and that senior engineers can now write 3x as much code, etc."
If you want an anecdote: the media company I work for just started hiring interns and juniors in software career tracks again after a lengthy hiatus.
Every now and then, I actively try to make an LLM replace my tasks, and fully do greenfield projects I would accept- I don't see it. It's very good, no doubt. But I have or have been given the project parameters, and just like with a junior, failures in communication inevitably lead to breakdowns in execution.
It requires a lot of guidance, luckily, I mean thank god otherwise we would be goners. The job itself hasn't become easier, but it did change. If you come across failures you update the spec, the guard rails, whatever you use to guide it. It's not a "it produced bad code and now it's forever useless" type of situation.
I mean, in your defense, last year I think you would have been right, but right now? Codex rocks, as does Claude. I am literally making money shipping a greenfield project to a customer right now. I'm basically a cheap consultant that is incrementally adding features to make something exactly what they want for way cheaper than it would be to do it the old way.
There are hiccups, outages, things to fix etc. but the customer is happy with the output, and the reduced price means they get bespoke solutions rather than some BS one size fits all SaaS app. Then my job is maintenance and effectively "ITSM." Which kind of sucks in some ways, I miss writing real code for real projects, but this is the future going forward. If you want something for your business, you'll generate it rather than pay for it and for now at least, getting beyond localhost requires someone who knows a bit about computers or is willing to learn. Most small businesses aren't willing to learn.
Now, to your point. Is the code all that clean? Nope (and in your defense sometimes I read through the codebase and shudder)... but who cares? Like, for awhile I would go through and frantically edit it, but why? It worked. Not only that, but there's going to be a new model in 3 months or whatever that can clean it up and make it less shitty. I've literally done that a couple times since I started doing this in January.
The customer ain't reading the code. They don't care as long as the the functionality works - that's what counts. The gazillion tests I have keep it stable as I push code, and the CI/CD pipeline removes a ton of the ass pain I'd have without it.
The biggest thing I'm worried about when it comes to clean code and good design is trying to make sure I keep the token count down on these projects so I can actually do meaningful work without burning through a week's worth of tokens in a single day. That, and I like to try to keep a sort of architectural bird's eye view on what's happening...
Like, I'm not sure what niche of the industry you're in, but for the stuff I'm using it for, stuff is working really well with LLMs.
I started this by doing some work for an old employer that asked me to start by modernizing an excel spreadsheet into an app I made for them like 10 years ago? They kept asking for more though since, and they’re my biggest customer right now. Which is good because I only have the bandwidth for like one more place right now.
I’ve had a few sort of one off things with other places? But I’m working on getting another company in the same industry right now and I’ll be able to adapt most of the code I’ve built here for another company if they end up deciding to use me.
But my biggest value to companies is “I already know this industry extremely well.”
Typically, this is not the type of phrase that is said right before everything goes extremely well
So much of the financial world runs off excel.
Think about all the geneticists that complain about excel re-writing DNA sequences.
It doesn't matter if its high stakes or low stakes. People use the software that generates the results they like. Not the software that is "correct to use".
I would have preferred someone who uses a null hypothesis and statistical tests.
Yes, and juniors aren't known for their productive work in the beginning. That's not their purpose. Their purpose is to do the mundane work, because it is important for them to become less junior and more senior.
That is robbed of them.
Which in 5-10 years means the need for senior developers is gonna shoot through the roof.
A year ago I had no use for any LLM-driven tools, and today I can do my entire job without writing a single line of code.
If that happened in a year, what can we expect in 5? I have no idea what my job might even look like by then.
Not even chess-playing? More applicable to jobs though, they're arguably better than some juniors.
If senior engineers are even 2x more productive with AI, then it’s like there are 2x as many senior engineers.
Most likely, seniors will be 10x more productive in 5 years using AI. This outpaces the retirement rate.
All the software engineers we need for the next 20-30 years are already in the current workforce.
Only way juniors can rise to the level of seniors will be through independent projects, long unpaid internships/apprenticeships, etc.
The industry will now have heavy gatekeeping built in.
There's no way of knowing what the industry will look like decades from now. Even assuming the prediction that seniors become 10x more productive, that would mean software becomes much cheaper to produce. Does that induce enough demand for additional software that keeps employment levels high? Could be, who knows.
Alternatively, maybe software hits a saturation point where there just isn't as much new ground to cover and employment levels crater. That could happen too.
Yup, that's reflected in the data as well, no need to invoke "vibes" or whatever.
https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260516_EPC...
https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260516_EPC...
The likely explanation is that there's job losses happening in some sectors, but it's made up for in other sectors.
How? By making a 5 person team a 4 person team + AI.
If i think about my co-workers (not excluding myself) from last 15 years, there was always someone you would accept just because it was better than not having that one person. If i can now replace them with more tokens/better models, man i wouldn't hesitate (of course i know what this means on a person to person level :/)
Are you talking the big 10? Or "tech companies" in general?
> AI really just can't replace productive work
Okay. Show me the productivity gains. Those are measurable. Why is the "AI is ready" crowd never prepared to show this?
> that if an AI can do junior-engineer-level coding work
Then you have no competitive edge and most of your output probably cannot be copyrighted.
I mean, if we want to not talk about economics that’s fine, but can the AI actually do junior work at the same price? What if we don’t look only at quarterly reports, and instead include the value of having people knowing about the business having to explain it to others, who then learn it and can improve it over time?
I think it’s clear the AI is strong, there’s no doubt about that, but that’s not the whole picture.
Even if we assume it can then not hiring Juniors still doesn't make sense - where will seniors come from in the future?
If AI was truly strong, we would be seeing signs in the job market. And we would certainly be seeing a lot more subscriptions and demand for these services. For most people, AI does not improve their lives. For a lot of them, especially younger people, it makes their lives much harder and sadder.
It's always been difficult to put a number on that value, which is the problem for the MBAs running the show. There's no number on the P&L assigned to tribal knowledge, and improvements that can be made by those with that knowledge and experience within the business.
It's a mistake that businesses keep repeating, over and over again, yet never actually learning the lesson. And now the industry is going to repeat it again, until there's enough pain that they realize that lost value and start rehiring again.