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 (15)
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 😂
It was crafted specially for this post - I just couldn’t resist 😄
Haha hillarious! 😄I love the humor!
Kinda seeing myself in the lady at the front.
Great picture 😂!
You're almost there too! 😁 Okay, you have a bit more leeway than me, but as a senior developer... 🤔
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 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.