4 ms·

Well if nobody hires junior devs, how do you make more senior devs?

TuringNYC 1y ago
> Well if nobody hires junior devs, how do you make more senior devs? This is an excellent question for society to answer, and hopefully for policy-makers to think about. A challenge with capitalism as I see it practices -- is that most for-profit orgs think quarter to quarter about earnings, costs, etc. They are not focused on second order issues arising 5-10yrs later. We've all seen this play out in our own lives -- with the gutting of American manufacturing...and the resulting discord a generation later.
kypro 1y ago
You don't need to. Most of the cost of senior developers can be cut soon too when the AI improves. ~2 years and I'd guess you could cut 50% of your senior dev costs for AI.
- johnbellone 1y ago
  I laugh every time that I read these claims. How long have you been at it?
  - daniel_iversen 1y ago
    I agree the parent statement seemed a bit "incomplete", high level and hasty, however it's not inconceivable to me that AI will continue to help even the senior devs be way more productive - and even to double productivity (or more..) feels very plausible.
  - kypro 1y ago
    If you're a senior dev and not already 20% more productive from AI you're doing something wrong. In 2-3 years 1 dev will easily be able to do what 2 devs could 5 years ago – e.g. you can half your senior dev team and operate at the same velocity as what you were previously able to. Given this and (other market factors) I don't see demand for senior devs being so high that a company would need to hire a junior dev because they are completely unable to hire a senior dev. The tech job market isn't likely to get that hot again in my opinion. So yes, given this broadly speaking junior devs are not needed. If someone is a junior dev and can't find a job they'll need to prove they can function at a senior level if they want to be employable going forward. But this is basically the market today anyway. But these are my predictions – you can disagree and I'm sure I will be out to some degree, but I'd put money on being mostly correct in these claims.
    - voidUpdate 1y ago
      Well hopefully the amount of companies needing senior devs will double in 2-3 years then otherwise we wont be able to find a job since we'll have been automated away
    - looofooo0 1y ago
      Jevons paradox here, if you increase the efficiency of anything, the demand goes up, not down. So any Dev-AI Cyborg will be in hot demand.
    - johnbellone 1y ago
      Productivity enhancements are one thing, but the full elimination of junior development roles is completely different. The dynamics also change with the size and scale of the team and company (components, services, multiple customers, etc). The role will change and individuals will become more productive. These tools are impressive and moving in the right direction to your prediction. But, personally, I think it is naive to think that the need for junior roles will be entirely eliminated in 5 years.
      - kypro 1y ago
        What would a junior developer be doing? Genuinely wondering what you would pay a junior developer to do today which couldn't do more cost effectively with AI? If you're talking about someone with a bit of technical knowledge who's cheaper than hiring a senior dev to prompt/manage AI agents then, yeah, I suspect there will be people doing this, but I don't think these are junior developers. In my opinion there would be no point in getting junior developer to do anything right now in the same way I'm not going to pay a rookie artist or web designer to do anything for me anymore because I'd get better results from AI. Obviously companies which are not productivity and cost optimised might not care/realise they can do this right away (there will always be the odd inefficient hire here and there), but my guess is that 99.9% of these hires make no economical sense and will be so few and far between that the role will effectively be eliminated in place of something else. And this happens often in tech. I used to know "webmasters" who just did HTML/CSS. The web still runs on HTML/CSS, but those jobs no longer exist and people who used to do that work are now doing other things. Again why the hell would I pay someone to write HTML/CSS when there are plenty WYSIWYGs and AI tools which could do a better job, cheaper and quicker?
gorbachev 1y ago
Companies that do that are going to start "training" non-developers to use AI tools to "code". Once this starts happening and senior developers in these companies are doing nothing but code reviewing PRs written by AI and fixing bugs in that code, they will leave and the company will have no developers.

> Well if nobody hires junior devs, how do you make more senior devs? This is an excellent question for society to answer, and hopefully for policy-makers to think about. A challenge with capitalism as I see it practices -- is that most for-profit orgs think quarter to quarter about earnings, costs, etc. They are not focused on second order issues arising 5-10yrs later. We've all seen this play out in our own lives -- with the gutting of American manufacturing...and the resulting discord a generation later.

kypro 1y ago

You don't need to. Most of the cost of senior developers can be cut soon too when the AI improves. ~2 years and I'd guess you could cut 50% of your senior dev costs for AI.

johnbellone 1y ago
I laugh every time that I read these claims. How long have you been at it?
- daniel_iversen 1y ago
  I agree the parent statement seemed a bit "incomplete", high level and hasty, however it's not inconceivable to me that AI will continue to help even the senior devs be way more productive - and even to double productivity (or more..) feels very plausible.
- kypro 1y ago
  If you're a senior dev and not already 20% more productive from AI you're doing something wrong. In 2-3 years 1 dev will easily be able to do what 2 devs could 5 years ago – e.g. you can half your senior dev team and operate at the same velocity as what you were previously able to. Given this and (other market factors) I don't see demand for senior devs being so high that a company would need to hire a junior dev because they are completely unable to hire a senior dev. The tech job market isn't likely to get that hot again in my opinion. So yes, given this broadly speaking junior devs are not needed. If someone is a junior dev and can't find a job they'll need to prove they can function at a senior level if they want to be employable going forward. But this is basically the market today anyway. But these are my predictions – you can disagree and I'm sure I will be out to some degree, but I'd put money on being mostly correct in these claims.
  - voidUpdate 1y ago
    Well hopefully the amount of companies needing senior devs will double in 2-3 years then otherwise we wont be able to find a job since we'll have been automated away
  - looofooo0 1y ago
    Jevons paradox here, if you increase the efficiency of anything, the demand goes up, not down. So any Dev-AI Cyborg will be in hot demand.
  - johnbellone 1y ago
    Productivity enhancements are one thing, but the full elimination of junior development roles is completely different. The dynamics also change with the size and scale of the team and company (components, services, multiple customers, etc). The role will change and individuals will become more productive. These tools are impressive and moving in the right direction to your prediction. But, personally, I think it is naive to think that the need for junior roles will be entirely eliminated in 5 years.
    - kypro 1y ago
      What would a junior developer be doing? Genuinely wondering what you would pay a junior developer to do today which couldn't do more cost effectively with AI? If you're talking about someone with a bit of technical knowledge who's cheaper than hiring a senior dev to prompt/manage AI agents then, yeah, I suspect there will be people doing this, but I don't think these are junior developers. In my opinion there would be no point in getting junior developer to do anything right now in the same way I'm not going to pay a rookie artist or web designer to do anything for me anymore because I'd get better results from AI. Obviously companies which are not productivity and cost optimised might not care/realise they can do this right away (there will always be the odd inefficient hire here and there), but my guess is that 99.9% of these hires make no economical sense and will be so few and far between that the role will effectively be eliminated in place of something else. And this happens often in tech. I used to know "webmasters" who just did HTML/CSS. The web still runs on HTML/CSS, but those jobs no longer exist and people who used to do that work are now doing other things. Again why the hell would I pay someone to write HTML/CSS when there are plenty WYSIWYGs and AI tools which could do a better job, cheaper and quicker?

gorbachev 1y ago

Companies that do that are going to start "training" non-developers to use AI tools to "code". Once this starts happening and senior developers in these companies are doing nothing but code reviewing PRs written by AI and fixing bugs in that code, they will leave and the company will have no developers.