I do think most of us can attest to the fact that, entry level roles are not 'entry' anymore, I do see alot of tech jobs on sites with '2 or more y...
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What a shit exercise. I don't think anyone can find a bug in 2000 lines in 20 minutes.
The way I would approach it is to ask for the previous code, to check what the refactoring did.
The command that triggered the refactoring, to check if there is language that AI can interpret wrongly.
Look at the logs, I assume they are the actions the AI executed, to check if a wrong command is given to AI by the agent.
If there is a bug, there is always a cause. When people produced the bugs it was easier, because they are typing slower. And if you know them, you understand were they fail.
With AI in the mix there are different stages where it can go wrong, so it is much harder to debug.
While syntax is a important part, schools that provide an IT trajectory should also teach the theory. Only learning syntax is something for a bootcamp.
There are smart people that can understand concepts very fast, but most of us need time to learn from our mistakes.
I think it is the businesses who think they can rely on as little people as possible, that are going to be in trouble once the cost of using AI are going to go up. At the moment the AI companies are running on big losses, and at one time they are going to generate money instead of spending it.
Even as someone that has experience I don't know everything. So are they going to fire me because I need a ramp up period to learn a new thing when asked?
When I did hiring interviews, I looked for intelligent questions when hiring a junior. Even if they were beside the point, it showed the curiosity to understand the problem.
It is a rough time now because a lot of things are still up in the air, and nobody can tell what is going to land.
Exactly
The way to do this exercise is to launch the agent, give it the code and the logs and ask it what went wrong.
That is an option, but you still need to be sure the refactor works. AI companies love nothing else than letting an agent keep executing commands until the logs are successful.
It might be possible the log errors don't contain enough context for the agent to act on.
I provided some better ways to get to the cause, instead of looking at the code.
I made some assumptions, because I haven't seen the actual code and logs, and I don't know what the agent does.
Wasn’t allowed to use the agent…. That’s the issue
Complete nonsense, if they can generate 2000 lines with an agent, you should be able to use at agent to debug it.
This post highlights a, for me, rather concerning development in the field: By replacing juniors with AI models and only hiring seniors, we'll run out of seniors eventually. If there are no juniors today, there are no seniors tomorrow and seniors want to retire at some point. Most companies that replaced juniors with AI models trade a sustainable industry development for short-term profit maximizing. Sadly, I do see why they're doing this, though. After all, shareholders are a thing.
Regarding universities: Should they teach for students to get entry level jobs? I.e. system forensics, orchestration and architectural judgement? Or should they focus on teaching a solid foundation in software engineering, math and theoretical computer science so the students are able to become senior eventually? In my opinion, if universities would focus on the first, they're actually playing into the problem, since the juniors will then lack the foundations of good software engineering.
The question is, how the industry can break out of this and ensure that enough juniors get the opportunities they need to become seniors. People with 10+ years of experience don't suffer from this. They're senior enough that even if they want to pick up a different technology, their ramp up time is short enough and their expertise in other techs large enough to justify the investment of hiring them. People with 2 years of experience or less? Too much of an investment.
Thank you for bringing this issue to light.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, you’ve said it all😊
I’m so sorry, Maame! That interview didn’t test anything at all. Maybe the guy himself had no idea how to find that bug, so in a moment of desperation he did the interview 😄 Fingers crossed that you land a really cool job!
Thank you Sylwia! 😊🤞🏾
Chances are the recruiter didn’t have the solution either.
Whenever an interview didn’t go my way, I always made a point to ask why — the criteria, the reasoning… And in a case like this, I would have asked for the actual solution.
If they didn’t have one, well, I’d draw the obvious conclusions.
i am assuming this could have also been the case
I'm very much in agreement with your thoughts.
I'd like to add one thing:
1) The guy who interviewed you is an idiot. There's no doubt about that.
2) Software always belongs to those who create it.
Even before AI, if a company lost its lead programmer, it was at serious risk.
I don't know how much it benefits a company to have all its code "created" by an entity with as same interests as a stone. I mean, the day there's a serious problem, that guy is screwed!
Rightly said
I agree with you priolo.
Are you freelancer?
I’m currently a part-time Computer Science student , but I do freelance part-time to sharpen my skills. I’m actively looking for internship opportunities at the moment, happy to chat if you have something in mind!
Wonderful to know you are exploring part time freelance to sharpen your skills, way to go.
I've been there too, struggling to find my footing in the industry. It's heartbreaking to hear that you were rejected for a junior role because of that stupid exercise. Universities need to start teaching what is actually in practice, not just how to write code for a specific job.
It is quite sad because universities these days even teach outmoded tech, it’s all about getting a good grade in most universities now
Universities have and always will teach "outdated tech". But what you can and should gain from learning that older technology or programming language is the foundational fundamentals that will allow you to adapt to what is used in the "modern tech stack".
Don't look at the older technology as a hinderance. Look at it and use it as the foundations of what all modern tech stacks have been built on top of.
You’re absolutely right about fundamentals, they do matter, and they’re what make adaptation possible in the long run.
Where I think the tension comes in is that universities are optimized for grades and theory, while the industry increasingly expects you to already know how to solve problems you’ve never encountered before. Bridging that gap isn’t trivial, especially when you’re expected to deeply understand the basics and somehow simulate years of real-world experience at the same time.
There are only so many hours in a day, and for students it often feels like you’re constantly behind no matter which direction you lean. You look around and see people who’ve already “figured it out” (the DSA gods and FAANG lovers) and it’s hard not to question whether you’re even cut out for this.
I also think mentorship is a big missing piece. In tech especially, good mentorship feels rare... not because people are unwilling, but often because everyone is stretched thin or still figuring things out themselves. Without that guidance, connecting theory to practice becomes much harder than it needs to be.
I don’t see foundations and real-world readiness as opposites, but right now, the burden of connecting them falls almost entirely on the individual, and that’s where a lot of people struggle.
Thanks for the advice Ken
Universities must pivot and rethink - if not, they'll go the way of the dinosaur ... if I'd be in the management of a university, or even just teaching at one, I'd be scrambling to rethink Uni's place in this brave new world, and how they can reposition ...
Reading code has always been more important than writing it, so nothing changed there. Don't lose hope, you will find a place, and no LLMs do not write perfect code and are pretty much useless without someone in the driver's seat. Keep your chin up, keep learning, and you will make it for sure.
I totally agree with your point. Keeping hope and courage is the best way to beat everyone in the domain :))
A 100%
Thank you!
Thank you!
So true
Kinda intimidating, edgy... but I guess it happens.
Please, don't give up.
Not giving up will just do better. 🙏🏿
Finding and fixing a bug hidden in application code was a requirement to pass entry level Vue.js exam few years ago, before AI agents even exist. It is a very useful skill and it always was.
The thing is schools almost never keep up
with the latest reality, because their plans are being composed by people who reflect their past experience and not the current reality. Especially now when things get obsolete within months.
addyo.substack.com/p/ai-wont-kill-...
I leave you with this line from the article I shared above.
As someone who has authored tools for teaching and training the next generation of software engineers. oluwasetemi.dev, JavaScript, React and others(CSS, HTML, VUE, TYPESCRIPT).
We must create a new role for the Junior Developers and encourage them to be the future of the noble career path.
Thank you for your bravery in sharing your story—such a marvelous write-up.
Thank you Ojo, will read the article as well
Ouch - and still I wonder if those companies are really "prudent" by choosing this path, having AI generate thousands of lines of "slop" and then reviewing that to find the faults ... will they at some point discover the downsides, and reconsider?
TBH reading this article it sounds like dystopia - I'm not against using AI as a tool, but I wonder about the sanity of the choices being made by companies who see it ONLY as a way to save $$$ - are they unknowingly building a house of cards, all for short term financial gain?
Like I said, I'm not against the usage of AI per se, but I'm saddened by the way some (hopefully not all) companies seem to go about it, in a short-sighted and cynical way, only financially driven ...
I'm glad I got my career started "in the old days", and I'm certainly not envying people trying to get into the field right now ... time to consider a plumbing/bricklaying/woodworking career? Or will all of that also be replaced by robots ;-)
At this point I guess those jobs have more security since ai can’t touch them 🤷🏾♀️😂
Not YET, with the emphasis on "yet" - but when AI gains "arms and legs" (robots) then who knows ... but yeah, for now it seems that "white collar" jobs are more under threat than "blue collar" ;-)
I think there is an important dimension missing from both the article and much of the discussion here: testing and diagnosis. No competent engineer is expected to read and mentally decipher 2,000 lines of unfamiliar code in twenty minutes, AI-generated or otherwise. That was never the real task. The real task was to demonstrate a diagnostic strategy. How you would interrogate a system you did not write, narrow the problem space, and let evidence surface the fault.
In practice, that means asking the right questions of the system itself, where would you add instrumentation, what assumptions would you validate, what minimal test or controlled replay would you introduce to challenge the agent’s claim of “success”? A single boundary test around the payment flow, an invariant check, or a focused log probe would tell you far more than staring at “perfect” code ever could. You are not proving you can spot the bug instantly; you are proving you know how to find it.
This is where I agree the education gap truly lies. We still teach students how to construct software in isolation, but not how to diagnose behaviour under uncertainty. Most real-world engineering happens after code exists, often written by someone else, and increasingly by something else. That is not a “Senior before Junior” problem; it is a failure to teach testing and systems diagnosis as first-class skills. If anything, the lesson here is not that juniors are obsolete, but that we have undervalued the craft of verification for far too long.
Thank you for the addition Tim!
This article highlights a real shift in expectations, especially with AI reducing traditional junior tasks. That said, expecting entry-level candidates to perform like seniors isn’t sustainable. Unrealistic interviews don’t measure potential, they filter it out. Strong fundamentals and mentorship still matter — if companies stop investing in juniors today, we’ll face a serious talent gap tomorrow.
Exactly! Someone did mention in the comments that eventually the “seniors” will retire and there might not be any juniors to fill in that gap
You’re describing the collapse of the “coder” identity and the rise of the systems‑level practitioner.
The industry isn’t deleting juniors—it’s deleting the tasks that used to justify juniors.
That’s a governance problem, not a talent problem.
And it’s understandable that this transition feels disorienting when the ladder hasn’t been rebuilt yet.
Using AI to find bugs is not a shortcut anymore. It is part of the skill set.
The value of a senior engineer today is not in manually reading every line of code, but in framing the right questions, understanding system behavior, validating AI output, and judging impact at an architectural level.
In real production systems, debugging is about signal correlation, constraints, tradeoffs, and speed under uncertainty. AI accelerates that loop, but it does not replace accountability or judgment. Seniors are still needed. The bar has simply moved.
If an interview process forbids AI entirely, it is often testing for a role that no longer exists in modern engineering teams.
sadly so, and the rest of us seeking for the foundational jobs might never get it
Well I don’t think AI will surpass developers minds
It’s not funny to press a button and ‘get the coding solution’.
I still can remember employers asking to their possible future-employees about a bunch of technologies/disciplines/skills and wanting to ‘pay for a Junior Developer’ (I mean…a very low salary…)
If you’re not enjoying (much more than ‘pressing the AI button solution’)
while programming in front of your code-editor or IDE, then you must quit.
To becomes a developer has similarities to learn/play an instrument:
you must feel some kind of ‘love’ for it and assume that most of the times, frustration will ‘walk besides you’.
Otherwise, you’ll quit very soon.
AI is just another “business bubble” (like commodities, contemporary art, etc…)
AI will assist you many times but there’s nothing else to expect.
To me if you “have survived” more than two (2) years (with a least of 6 (six) hours per day) in front of your code-editor, than you’re very late to call yourself a “Junior Developer”.
“Why the "Junior" Label is a Lie in 2026” => Of course! It always been a lie!
HAPPY 2026 and KEEP CODING! **
I think this goes for every career, if you don’t enjoy what you do you’ll quit eventually. Thanks for sharing your thoughts
The reality is that it always has been difficult to get started in any industry, not just in Software. Technical requirements change for an employee's role as technologies evolve. Right now everyone seems to be embracing AI, but a lot of companies don't know what to do with it. The example you gave of your interview proves that - why would you ask someone to review 2000 lines of AI-generated code of which you have no prior knowledge? It seems like you're not going to learn much about a candidate that way.
Don't let this put you off one bit. Your frustration is understandable and we've all been there. Hopefully, the next interview will be appropriate for an actual entry-level position.
Fully agree
I agree with you, and yes! hopefully the next interview goes on well than this one.
My quick advice to code audit.
A first problem that code is written in typescript which is add unneccecary build complexity to project. I prefered jsDoc instead, take a look my post about that.
A next pont to check is the state handling that is mission critical.
A third is a easy testable async solution.
A fourth is eliminite a unnececcary dependencies.
Code formating is fare last in a check order.
Also good sign if do not use oop.
Avoide a function, much cleaner if function declared as const.
This piece captures a real shift we're seeing in 2026: many entry-level postings now expect skills that used to define mid/senior roles, like debugging large AI-generated codebases, spotting subtle issues in 'clean' output, and guiding/orchestrating agents from day one. It's forcing a rethink of how people enter the field—less about writing basic code from scratch, more about auditing, critiquing, and governing automated systems. Whether this compresses the traditional career ladder or just evolves it depends on how companies (and education) adapt long-term. Interesting times either way.
Exactly, this really redirected my focus on other things when job searching other than just the theory aspect taught in school
This is true for many. School is amazing in teaching theory and principle, and it's still highly desired.
I think you posting this highlights how the market does shift, and how now, more true than ever, it's not about what you know, it's about what you can do.
While the exercise isn't particularly amazing at exploring strengths and weaknesses, it's another example of being able to think quickly on your feet.
I believe firmly you'll be able to get the job you want! It's just now a matter of thinking differently.
You got this!
Exactly right now school is just for the degree, if you just rely solely on a uni degree, seems you’ll fumble greatly and might never even find a job. To me I think Uni is just a place to learn the foundation and pass examinations and also getting a good grade. But the heavy lifting of what you can do will never be learnt in school sadly
impressive work
Thank you Nadeem
Feeling sad for you. I spent a year in CS and I realized that I am not going to make a career in it because I loved traditional coding and the modern CS is nothing about coding anymore. So, I just dropped out and now I am going to do electrical engineering. I still do coding as a hobby. And honestly, in the big 26, coding is nothing more than a hobby.
True, plus there are other things you can do with a CS degree, happy for you.
Good article from a generic perspective, but different IT companies and business are impacted differently by AI. I do not disagree on the impact to freshers / juniors, but with all due respect, I have a different view captured here, would appreciate any thoughts:
dev.to/shitij_bhatnagar_b6d1be72/d...
Were you allowed to find the bug by working with the AI agent, so that you could describe the bug to the AI agent so it could tell you where it made the bug?
That’s the craziest part, they expected me to find the bug without the agent… which seemed unfair
Yes, I concur. That's unfair. (It would have been unfair anyway even if they had let you work with the AI agent, unless you were already familiar with that particular AI agent.)
the baseline expectations for developers have fundamentally changed. What used to be “entry-level” work is increasingly automated or commoditized by AI, forcing companies to look for people who can think, reason, and solve complex problems from day one — effectively making “senior” skills the new minimum.
BRAIN INFLATION
Man, when I saw the 2000 lines of fresh code, I see something wrong here. No one who know how to write a system does that. That is a failure. A system needs to divine to components, modules, and separated infrastructures.
A junior level is know what are these lines of code do, how to execute basic commands
A Senior level is know what is business domain behind the scene, combine multiple infrastructures, modules, components. How everything is intertwined together to make the system actually work and work well, stable.
If someone give you 2000 lines of code without understand the business domain and strategy, then it is not worth to work with. They're just a dictator who want to judge others. And thus they just want you to fail, and feel smug at you.
Though nowadays, we need the job to be alive, therefore, as a senior level, you need to prepare at least few steps in order to walkthrough some shits like this. If it ever happens again.
Remember we are engineer, we are the creator. AI only learn and generate with certain of knowledges that we created. Don't give up, better chances for better job
Thank you giang, will keep that in mind!
Honestly it saddens me NOT that companies are reaching for AI, and not even that they think they might, at some point, need fewer employees because of AI ...
That's not it - no, it saddens me when I read a story like this, how during an interview someone shoves 2000 lines of AI-generated code in your face and says "you have 20 minutes, please find the bug" - that's just cynical, and for me it's a sign of incompetence rather than brilliance.
If you truly want to utilize AI to make your company work better and more efficiently, then first develop a vision and a strategy, and make sure you know what you're talking about - and even then you still have to treat people ("even" juniors) with respect!
it is really tough out there for juniors entering the job market
Blame the companies, not just AI - companies should be a bit mindful, but I'm sure the "good" ones are - good companies (the ones you want to work for) care about their people, not just about their profits!
This post highlights the tough reality many of us in tech are facing: "junior" roles are disappearing or being redefined. With AI taking over basic coding tasks, companies now expect new hires to already have senior-level skills-like debugging AI-generated code, managing automated systems, and spotting security issues in AI outputs. The expectation for 2+ years of experience for entry-level jobs is becoming common, making it harder for students and new grads to break into the field.
The post emphasizes how traditional skills like coding are no longer enough. To succeed in 2026, we need to focus on skills like auditing AI, orchestrating automation, and making architectural decisions. It’s a wake-up call for developers to step up their game and adapt to this new tech landscape where the gap between junior and senior roles is quickly closing.
Exactly!
Universities (or other forms of education) have a role to play here - they (and not just beginning/aspiring devs) need to step up their game ...
Thank you for sharing your story. I support what the Nobel laureate in chemistry said about Google's DeepMind that AI should have been launched in a better way for the benefit of all. I don't know where the new apps will end up; in my case, I continue to use OOP, software architectures, inheritance, MVC, and MVVM in Android because they give robustness to the software. New developers are just copying and pasting code; they're building on a sandcastle. I'm a software engineer with over 17 years of experience, and a solid foundation is very important to me.
You’re welcome 😊
The 'Junior' role hasn't disappeared, it has evolved into a role of orchestration and control. We have to stop training students to compete with LLMs and start training them to be the senior-level filter that catches the hallucinations before they hit production.
This article highlights a really important shift in the tech job market — entry-level roles now often expect advanced skills because companies lean on AI for routine coding, leaving humans to solve complex problems. It’s challenging for newcomers, and I agree that mentorship and real-world experience are crucial if we want to rebuild a healthy talent pipeline where juniors can grow into seniors.”
This is painfully accurate. The shift isn’t subtle anymore — “junior” roles quietly expect senior judgment because the actual junior work is automated. Writing code isn’t the bottleneck now, understanding it is.
That interview story hits hard because it shows the real gap: we’re trained to produce code, not to interrogate systems we didn’t build. Debugging AI output, reasoning about intent vs behavior, spotting silent failures — none of that shows up in most curricula yet.
The uncomfortable truth is that entry-level today is less about learning to build and more about learning to control, audit, and reason. That’s a massive leap, and pretending otherwise just sets people up to fail.
This conversation is overdue.
Yeah exactly
AI (chat tools) today cannot even largely produce good compilable code for a real world problem or existing system issues, let alone replacing developers, though it can surely give starting points e.g. writing test cases for an existing piece of code. (personal experience)
On the debugging skills... it has always been necessary for entry level devs to know one or more IDEs and the debug tools, ofcourse it may not have been explicit, so its not a new expectation in my humble opinion... one of the idea of doing projects jointly in teams or using open source during university also is to go through other people's code and trace/debug it.
Sadly it’s even worse than you think, because your uni courses still need to reach the language syntax and gotchas — the difference now is that instead of you writing the language, you’ll be using your knowledge to proofread AI output. So now you’re essentially going to be learning how to handle language-specific Pull Requests
I know it’s crazy! That’s why a lot of people just give up sadly
Great read, though I see the landscape a bit differently. I'm a .NET developer currently in the trenches, and I’m actually doubling down on the 'traditional' grind (DSA, algorithms) specifically because of what you described.
You mentioned the interviewer wanted a 'Forensic Auditor' to find a logic flaw. To catch a machine lying about a complex payment gateway, you need to understand the underlying logic better than the model does. If we skip the 'Junior' phase of writing loops and solving problems, we lose the intuition needed to debug the AI's 'perfect' hallucinations. I think the job isn't deleted, the bar for entry just got raised to 'Lead' level faster.
Rightly said
This hit way too close to home.
What scared me most isn’t that juniors are expected to know more — it’s that the learning phase itself is being silently removed. The gap between “student” and “productive engineer” used to be filled with mentorship, mistakes, and time. Now it’s filled with AI… and zero patience.
I’ve realized that writing code is no longer the differentiator. Understanding why code fails, where systems lie, and when automation should be questioned is the real skill.
The problem is: universities still train us to be good typists in a world that now needs editors, auditors, and system thinkers.
We don’t need fewer juniors. We need a new definition of what “junior” even means.
the danger isn't that AI will replace us. it's that companies will blindly trust a probabilistic model with deterministic business logic. That 20-minute test proved nothing except that the company doesn't understand risk management. A human in the loop is the only insurance policy against catastrophic system failure. Syntax is cheap, judgment is expensive.
We are the first generation of developers who have to be Seniors before we’re allowed to be Juniors.
This is real. "Programming Dark Age" is coming
The Dark Age of Programming sounds like a damn good title for a book explaining the likely outcome to all of this...
Exactly
I think this is painfully accurate, and the “forensic auditor” framing is the part most people are still missing.
What changed isn’t just tooling, it’s expectations. Juniors used to be hired to produce. Now they’re expected to judge, debug, and contain risk in systems they didn’t write, often generated by AI. That’s a senior skill, whether companies admit it or not.
One thing I’d add though: this isn’t just an AI problem, it’s a training gap problem. Universities are still optimizing for teaching syntax and isolated problems, while the real job has shifted to reasoning about systems, failures, and tradeoffs under uncertainty.
The frustrating part is that the path forward is unclear for students. “Be a lead before you’re a junior” isn’t actionable advice unless we also redefine what entry-level learning should look like: reading logs, tracing data flows, understanding payments, security, failure modes, and real production constraints.
This hurts, but you’re right, pretending the old roadmap still works is doing more damage than having the uncomfortable conversation.
I felt that when using AI. it makes me judge, debug, and contain risk in systems that it did. it is very bad at debuging and explaining code and it overcomplicateds code but AI is not the reson it is that nobody tell us about it
What i noticed is even when they write they are looking for junior dev and what they are actually asking from junior dev, that's not a junior position it's a minimum of mid level dev. So i would say that now junior dev is in reality mid level dev with at least 3+ years of experience. But as someone already said in comments, no senior devs can last for ages, sooner or later there will be no more senior devs, but also there won't be junior to replace seniors, at least not with experience. Also you can see that today many junior devs are actually vibe coders ( Claude/Lovalble and what not ). They don't even bother to read any of documentation or to Google out something they need, just asking LLMs about everything, therefore companies need someone to fix their LLMs created programs/websites because LLMs are so "perfect". I really do hate this AI century...
An excellent and well-timed post, Maame.
For myself, AI remains a solution looking for a problem. That said, AI is here to stay, in some way, shape, or form. The bubble will burst but it won't burst in the same way as other technologies marketed as the next big thing have. It will always have a use but it is up to us to define it now - before it's too late.
By too late, I simply mean before understanding is lost. This is especially true to those starting their journey. They should build a foundation before looking indepth at AI. Why? Because in the future, people will be needed to understand that vibe code. There will be a period of transition before things settle down.
To my mind, Senior Developers are best placed to make the most gains with AI at the moment. I say this because they have that firm foundation. Juniors without that will struggle. Not today, no, but at some future point.
This isn't an attack on AI - it's simply a reminder that we can decide how to use it.
I completely agree that Senior Developers are the ones seeing the most gain right now. To them, AI is a force multiplier; they have the mental models to spot hallucinations or inefficient patterns instantly. For those of us still in the 'foundation-building' phase, there is a real risk that using AI too early becomes a crutch rather than a tool.
Long story short: This interview was done by a sadistic, ignorant dictator and you should be happy you did not get the job.
Longer version: Their behavior is abusive, power driven, exploitative, and has nothing to do with "real world requirements". AI is stupid. It parrots Syntax, nothing more. Development is much more than that. C levels do not understand this. (E.g. elon musk judging his employees by the number of lines of code produced is a clear sign of the guy being technically inapt, not knowing what coding is about)
These kinds of brute force attempts to automation will fall onto the feet of many, many companies, big and small, very soon, and long term. With devastating consequences and desperate attempts of fixing, cause nobody actually wrote the code bases/systems and is "at home" in them anymore, as it used to be, naturally, via properly training and onboarding humans.
The wet capitalistic dream will become a nightmare for those who dreamed it. Sadly also for those who have to clean up their mess. Cause the people who will have caused the harm have zero idea and skills and are useless in actual productions, where things are build and maintained. They will say "whoopsy daisy" , and instead call in humans again. This time as cleaners, Which is already signaled by this interview.
It is dehumanizing, frankly. Ai and trumpism causes those sadistic, inhumane people and practices to surface everywhere now, whereas formerly, those were more subdued or hidden. That was because such people like your interviewer were formerly living at a time where they were dependent on others and hence still had to put on a mask of eye level and respect to get what they want (profit).
With "the inevitable "technical progress" cat out of the bag", those exact people now think it's time to freely let their oppressing power fantasy juices flowing, because they think ai is their ultimate power tool which enables them to rule and conquer, ruthlessly, hiding behind that very, allegedly "inevitable" technical progress. They bully not only employees as if they were Trump himself, but also try to more aggressively dominate other companies or the entire market via ai "advantage". It is sickening.
The reality is that ai coding is mostly snake oil, producing technical depth that has vast consequences for future code bases everywhere. Some experts say that these flaws and hidden holes in ai generated code will cause years of pain and debugging to come. And I think they are exactly right. Let alone the fact that without Juniors, there is no future of development, logically. People like your interviewer are not hurting only their businesses and their employees, but the entirety of the industry.
The thing with ai in every field is that it seems to do things right, and quick. The reality is, and has always been, that good, solid things take time. Software, game dev, or arts, are all inherently super complex. Not because of the quantities of syntax, systems, or imagery as outputs, but, due to the complex interplay of involved aspects that runs down into subsystems and sub-aspects that get more complex the more fine granular they get. This is the demand of real world, not yet existent projects. "AI" has no idea about those, as it does not live. It has no real world context. AI has NO experience. It is a sycophantic parrot machine.
AI is trained on static data (forget about the lazy patches like "dynamic context search", which basically just adds in a quick google search a user could have done themselves). It will never be able to know what is going on in a real world context, real world projects, real world requirements, and real world edge cases. The naive choir that sings "just you wait! ONE day it will get there" is what we are hearing for 5+ years now. LLM's will never get there. And there will be never any form of the wet dream of AGI. (In truth, ai should have been named LLMs, and AGI simply AI. But they have given these misnomers on purpose, for marketing, and a lot of people fall for it).
What I believe is that basics are the most valuable thing to learn. And I think that typing code and "worrying about the semicolon" is just as important in any education. Just because we got audio playback did not mean people stopped learning to read and write letter by letter. Just because we have google, people did not stop to write for themselves. Google wouldn't be what it is if people would have. And certainly ai would not remotely be what it is without all that human made data based on experience and knowledge. Without that, the snake will eat its tail.
Model Collapse is already a serious unsolvable problem that will cause immense trouble to future models, up to complete unusability, as the inet gets flooded with synthetic data. That is why they fight so hard for human data, while simultaneously clinging onto the narrative that it is ai that is so duper powerful (as if they could have it both ways), when in fact it is human data, based on centuries of xp and skill, that makes it even remotely usable. Let alone the fact that they use low wage, 3rd world workers to filter the horrendous stuff out of the training data for ai not to be the total disaster it would be if it would scrape on raw, unfiltered data. This is something they completely hide from the end user.
It is purely idiotic to circumvent proper Junior education in favor of a machine that is in the hands of a few mega corps that can barely generate a profit.
Once this all settled down, I truly believe it is the people who spewed "adapt or die" who will have to learn to adapt. Those who neglected or "sacrificed" their interest and passion to learn and understand in favor of prompting, will be the ones who will be "left behind", cause they have no real world value.
If nowadays, anyone can generate an app via vibe coding, anyone can be a programmer, writer or artist, which is what they advertise the masses, while being increasingly detached from reality, then basic economics 101 tells us that these overabundant army of unskilled and ignorant prompters will not be in demand. Since those kinds of people will be abundant they won't be thought after (ai bros curcles are already crying loud about it). They are basically as obsolete already as they try to tell the rare people that have the urge to really learn and develop skills to be already obsolete.
The act of prompting, and even code review, will be 'trivial' to automate as well (no matter the sustainability or quality, corps will keep pushing for full automation, not partial, or "guided" automation).
In the end, people without hands on xp will not be able to properly "guide" a fully automated software development environment, because they lack the very basic understanding. Let alone could they connect that to real world requirements.
It is like the infamous 'horn example' from the "ai arts": If a commisiened ai artist generates an image, and the customer says: "We want exactly this picture of a demon, only now with just one horn its head instead of two." - The ai artists with zero understanding and skill of painting, will be completely screwed. And I see no difference with this in code. Regenerating the entire picture will never deliver what the customer asked. Re-generating only the horn, will likely screw over the entire whole. It is is as simple as that. It is logical. But we do not live in logical times anymore ever since the ai snake oil has been sold to the masses as a new replacement for religion.
There is much more going on behind the surface than meets the eye in any craft. But that very fact only hits you once you start to look into and learn a craft, and become active and experienced in it. "Ai-skilled" people naively believe it is all inside their small "Genie in a bottle" inside their pockets, and they can thus skip it all. (Not only that, they even believe they dominate and outcompete people who acquired the skill and knowledge their genie is trained on in the first place)
This is the reason even a lot of seniors reject ai tools aside from code completion (which we had already working well enough before btw. It has never been the "typing" holding us back). A lot of them look through this. Recent studies found that lots of devs who embrace ai coding, work 20% slower, while under the impression of working 20% faster.
It is basically a large scale "lottery" or "ponzi scheme", to enrich the ones selling the snake oil. Seeing this happen not only in private sector but even across hiring in companies is truly disheartening. (Some people run into fully ai driven job interviews these days, let that sink in)
Hang in there. My sympathies. It is brave of you to share this story. You did a service to others making this transparent. It made my blood boil, as many other stories I hear nowadays (heard and read about some similar ones). Don't let yourself be beaten down by this temporary bloated bubble that is based on wet capitalistic dreams of self deception and dreams of the "big buck without any or little effort"... it will pop/adjust, and once it passed, it is people like you, with intellect and brains, and an education, that will be the ones sought after. Not people who generate a 2000 lines long God Class, while having others doing the actual work, and even having the audacity to make that a requirement for getting hired. (They are very likely having trouble to find anyone who is willing to work there)
As model collapse will become more and more a thing, and education gets sacrificed in favor of automation, there will be a very rude awakening ahead for most people like your interviewer. And we shall never forget who these people in the industry were, who suddenly lived their sadistic oppressive ways right in the open, hiding behind the inevitability of technology and trumpism. Can not wait for it to happen. All the Best.
Please understand that this isn't your fault! Soon you'll find the wavelength of the current market and adapt to it as you move towards a great future. Learn at your own pace, with curiosity and creativity. All the best ❤️
Thank you Atul😊
Couldn't agree more
Well, you are certainly a good writer.
Thank you Ben!
If the interviewer didn't let you use an AI to find the bug, he had no intention of hiring anyone for the role. No one in AD 2026 is bug hunting by reading code. Period.
You're right, the entry-level tech interview has become very hard nowadays. Keep working hard, you'll get a better job one fine day.
Thank you
I’d say semi-senior, but yeah
We mostly have senior developers. All of our code is written by AI, and verified by the senior developers.
We live in a timeline where Paleolithic instincts, medieval institutions, and god-speed technology coexist.
This is reality nowadays specially due to slowdown in USA, Europe. In India; due to many projects getting cancelled or delayed; there are more ppl available to join the senior level at junior senior.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing. Did you take notes about what kind of payment gateway was? Or what was the problem that the gateway was implemented to solve?
To be honest with the kind of pressure I experienced within those 20 mins, my mind became blank that I do not really remember, plus I’m very sure they weren’t serious about hiring
Thanks for putting my feelings into words.
You are not alone in this!
yes!
Great Article! Thanks
Thank you
Thank you
You’re welcome 😊
Companies want Day-1 impact without investing in ramp-up. The gap between education and industry is becoming dangerously wide.
Extremely wide