The blurry line between junior and mid-level, from an AI-era developer

I've been thinking about what being a junior developer actually means today, especially now that I'm looking for my first job.

When ChatGPT came out, I tried it because it was new, but I wasn't really interested in programming yet. Then, one summer, I decided to give a random Python course a try. I enjoyed it, and the following year I started a two-year vocational training program in software development. So AI has been around for pretty much my entire journey into programming.

I've used it to explain things I didn't understand, give me examples, help me debug, and sometimes write code for me. I remember the first time I asked it to write something and got a working result. It was strange. I had barely started learning, and suddenly I had a tool that could fill in a lot of the gaps for me. This was when ChatGPT was much worse than it is today, with plenty of hallucinations and confidently wrong answers, but it was still enough to make me wonder: how much of this do I actually know?

In a way, we now have a teacher available whenever we need one. You can ask the same question five different ways, get examples, have your code reviewed, or ask why something isn't working. That's an incredible learning tool. And while looking into this, I found that similar reactions happened when frameworks and other abstractions became popular. Some developers saw them as shortcuts or even “cheating”, which reminded me of the current discussion around vibe coding. Maybe this feeling isn't entirely new. Programming has always been about using better abstractions and tools.

But now I'm looking for a job, and that's where I find the distinction between junior and mid-level particularly interesting. AI can make someone with relatively little professional experience much more independent, so where exactly does the line sit?

Is it how well you perform on a DSA problem? How you answer technical questions in an interview? How much you can build without help? All of these things can be practiced, prepared, and increasingly assisted by tools.

I'd love to hear your opinions.