4 ms·

The article is mostly wrong, companies are already not recruiting as many junior/fresh college graduates as before. If AI is doing everything but architecting (

by suyash 1y ago

The article is mostly wrong, companies are already not recruiting as many junior/fresh college graduates as before. If AI is doing everything but architecting (which is a false argument but let's roll with it), naturally companies will need fewer engineers to architect and supervise AI systems.

uludag 1y ago
There's the software factory hypothesis though that states that LLMs will bring down the level of skill required to produce software, reducing the skill bar required to produce the same software (i.e. automation leads to SWE being like working on factory line). In this scenario, unskilled cheap labor would be desired, making juniors more preferable. My guess though is that the lack of hiring is simply a result of the over saturation of the market. Just looking at the growth of CS degrees awarded you have to conclude that we'd be in such a situation eventually.
- roenxi 1y ago
  The equilibriums wouldn't quite work out that way. The companies would still hire the most capable software engineers (why not?), but the threat of being replaced by cheap juniors means that they don't have much leverage and their wages drop. It'll still be grizzled veterans and competitive hiring processes looking for people with lots of experience. These things don't happen overnight though, it'll probably take a few years yet for the shock of whatever is going on right now to really play out.
VBprogrammer 1y ago
I suspect that any reduction in hiring is more a function of market sentiment than jobs being replaced by AI. Many companies are cutting costs rather than expanding as rapidly as possible during the capture the flag years.
- bradlys 1y ago
  People keep forgetting that the hiring cuts were happening before AI was hyped up. AI is merely the justification right now because it helps stock price. We’ve been seeing layoffs for over 3 years…
  - whstl 1y ago
    A company I worked for got half a billion euros funding and the command from Masayoshi Son was to "hire as many developers as you can". That was before the pandemic and AI. It was predictable that some layoffs would eventually happen, we just didn't know it would be so fast.
    - bradlys 1y ago
      I don’t think people imagined this would be lasting for over 3 years. People were ready for a bumpy 12-18 months and not for this trend to be the new normal.
      - whstl 1y ago
        Good point, I agree. I wonder if it's AI, the market, both, or some other cause... :/
        bradlys 1y ago
        It’s the market, lol. You think executives are gonna be saying, “yeah we’re laying off people because our revenue stinks and we have too high of costs!” They’re gonna tell people, “yeah, we definitely got AI. It’s AI, that’s our competitive edge and why we had to do layoffs. We have AI and our competitors don’t. That’s why we’re better. (Oh my god, I hope this works. Please get the stock back up, daddy needs a new yacht.)”
      - marcosdumay 1y ago
        The huge Silicon Valley corps are mostly zombies right now. The bad hiring market will last for as long as they dominate the software market.
- ghaff 1y ago
  And correcting for a hiring bubble. Depends on where too. Was just talking to a friend yesterday who works for a military sub (so not just software) and they said their projects are basically bottlenecked by hiring engineers.
ncruces 1y ago
People apparently can't decide if AI is killing juniors, or if it's lowering the bar of what laymen can achieve.
- whstl 1y ago
  Anecdotal but: Fintech unicorn that has AI in its name, but still forbids usage of LLMs for coding (my previous job) --> no hiring of juniors since 2023. YC startup funded in 2024 heavily invested in AI (my current job) --> half the staff is junior.
- ghaff 1y ago
  There's definitely this broader argument and you can even find it in academic papers. Is AI best at complementing expertise or just replacing base-level skills? Probably a bit of both but an open question.
reality2025 1y ago
[flagged]
- jghn 1y ago
  This does not explain why so many software professionals are finding themselves out of a job as well as finding it hard to acquire a new one.
  - reality2025 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - bayarearefugee 1y ago
      Please provide your evidence for the implied claim that CS programs outside of the US are producing better workers than CS programs inside the US minus the "top-7" you reference.
      - reality2025 1y ago
        [flagged]
worldsayshi 1y ago
The amount and sophistication of sailing ships increased considerably as steam ships entered the market. Only once steam ships were considerably better in almost every regard that mattered to the market did the sailing ships truly get phased out to become a mere curiosity. I think the demand for developers will similarly fluctuate wildly while LLM:s are still being improved towards the point of being better programmers than most programmers. Then programmers will go and do other stuff. Being able to make important decisions about what to build should be one of those things that should increase in demand as the price of building stuff goes down. Then again, making important technical decisions and understand their consequences have always been part of what developers do. So we should be good at that.
- skydhash 1y ago
  The advantages of steam over sails were clear to everyone. The only issues left was engineering, solving each mini problem as they went and make the engine more efficient. Since the advent of ChatGPT, hallucinations were pointed out as a problem. Today we're no way close to even a hint on how to correct it.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    > The advantages of steam over sails were clear to everyone They were most certainly not! Which is why you had a solid 60+ years of sail+steam ships. And even longer for cargo! [0] Parent picked a great metaphor for AI adoption: superior in some areas, inferior in others, with the balance changing with technological advancement. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Western https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Western https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sirius_(1837) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sirius_(1837) https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ap0dn/when_did_navies_begin_to_phase_out_sailingonly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ap0dn/when_...
    - skydhash 1y ago
      > superior in some areas, inferior in others, with the balance changing with technological advancement. So what are the areas that AI are superior to traditional programming? If your answer is suggestion, then refinement with traditional tooling, then it's just a workflow addon like contextual help, google search, and github code search. And I prefer the others because they are more reliable. We have six major phases in the software development lifecycle: 1) Planning, 2) Analysis, 3) Design, 4) Implementation, 5) Testing, 6) Maintenance. I failed to see how LLM assistance is objectively better even in part than not having it at all. Everything I've read is mostly anecdote where the root cause is inexperience and lack of knowledge.
JohnMakin 1y ago
They're not hiring juniors and now my roles consist of 10x as much busywork as they used to. People are expanding to fill these gaps; I'm not seeing much evidence that AI is "replacing" these people as much as businesses think they now don't need to hire junior developers. The thing is though, in 5 years there is not going to be as many seniors and if AI doesn't close that gap, businesses are going to feel it a lot more than whatever they think they're gaining by not hiring now.
- burningChrome 1y ago
  >> The thing is though, in 5 years there is not going to be as many seniors. This is already happening. Over the past 4-5 years I've known more than 30 senior devs either transition into areas other than development, or in many case, completely leave development all together. Most have left because they're getting stuck in situations like you describe. Having to pick up more managerial stuff and AI isn't capable of even doing junior level work so many just gave up and left. Yes, AI is helping in a lot of different ways to reduce development times, but the offloading of specific knowledge to these tools is hampering actual skill development. We're in for a real bumpy ride over the next decade as the industry comes to gripes with how to deal with a lot of bad things all happening at the same time.

by suyash 1y ago

uludag 1y ago

There's the software factory hypothesis though that states that LLMs will bring down the level of skill required to produce software, reducing the skill bar required to produce the same software (i.e. automation leads to SWE being like working on factory line). In this scenario, unskilled cheap labor would be desired, making juniors more preferable. My guess though is that the lack of hiring is simply a result of the over saturation of the market. Just looking at the growth of CS degrees awarded you have to conclude that we'd be in such a situation eventually.

roenxi 1y ago
The equilibriums wouldn't quite work out that way. The companies would still hire the most capable software engineers (why not?), but the threat of being replaced by cheap juniors means that they don't have much leverage and their wages drop. It'll still be grizzled veterans and competitive hiring processes looking for people with lots of experience. These things don't happen overnight though, it'll probably take a few years yet for the shock of whatever is going on right now to really play out.

VBprogrammer 1y ago

I suspect that any reduction in hiring is more a function of market sentiment than jobs being replaced by AI. Many companies are cutting costs rather than expanding as rapidly as possible during the capture the flag years.

bradlys 1y ago
People keep forgetting that the hiring cuts were happening before AI was hyped up. AI is merely the justification right now because it helps stock price. We’ve been seeing layoffs for over 3 years…
- whstl 1y ago
  A company I worked for got half a billion euros funding and the command from Masayoshi Son was to "hire as many developers as you can". That was before the pandemic and AI. It was predictable that some layoffs would eventually happen, we just didn't know it would be so fast.
  - bradlys 1y ago
    I don’t think people imagined this would be lasting for over 3 years. People were ready for a bumpy 12-18 months and not for this trend to be the new normal.
    - whstl 1y ago
      Good point, I agree. I wonder if it's AI, the market, both, or some other cause... :/
      - bradlys 1y ago
        It’s the market, lol. You think executives are gonna be saying, “yeah we’re laying off people because our revenue stinks and we have too high of costs!” They’re gonna tell people, “yeah, we definitely got AI. It’s AI, that’s our competitive edge and why we had to do layoffs. We have AI and our competitors don’t. That’s why we’re better. (Oh my god, I hope this works. Please get the stock back up, daddy needs a new yacht.)”
    - marcosdumay 1y ago
      The huge Silicon Valley corps are mostly zombies right now. The bad hiring market will last for as long as they dominate the software market.
ghaff 1y ago
And correcting for a hiring bubble. Depends on where too. Was just talking to a friend yesterday who works for a military sub (so not just software) and they said their projects are basically bottlenecked by hiring engineers.

ncruces 1y ago

People apparently can't decide if AI is killing juniors, or if it's lowering the bar of what laymen can achieve.

whstl 1y ago
Anecdotal but: Fintech unicorn that has AI in its name, but still forbids usage of LLMs for coding (my previous job) --> no hiring of juniors since 2023. YC startup funded in 2024 heavily invested in AI (my current job) --> half the staff is junior.
ghaff 1y ago
There's definitely this broader argument and you can even find it in academic papers. Is AI best at complementing expertise or just replacing base-level skills? Probably a bit of both but an open question.

reality2025 1y ago

[flagged]

jghn 1y ago
This does not explain why so many software professionals are finding themselves out of a job as well as finding it hard to acquire a new one.
- reality2025 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bayarearefugee 1y ago
    Please provide your evidence for the implied claim that CS programs outside of the US are producing better workers than CS programs inside the US minus the "top-7" you reference.
    - reality2025 1y ago
      [flagged]

worldsayshi 1y ago

The amount and sophistication of sailing ships increased considerably as steam ships entered the market. Only once steam ships were considerably better in almost every regard that mattered to the market did the sailing ships truly get phased out to become a mere curiosity. I think the demand for developers will similarly fluctuate wildly while LLM:s are still being improved towards the point of being better programmers than most programmers. Then programmers will go and do other stuff. Being able to make important decisions about what to build should be one of those things that should increase in demand as the price of building stuff goes down. Then again, making important technical decisions and understand their consequences have always been part of what developers do. So we should be good at that.

skydhash 1y ago
The advantages of steam over sails were clear to everyone. The only issues left was engineering, solving each mini problem as they went and make the engine more efficient. Since the advent of ChatGPT, hallucinations were pointed out as a problem. Today we're no way close to even a hint on how to correct it.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  > The advantages of steam over sails were clear to everyone They were most certainly not! Which is why you had a solid 60+ years of sail+steam ships. And even longer for cargo! [0] Parent picked a great metaphor for AI adoption: superior in some areas, inferior in others, with the balance changing with technological advancement. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Western https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Western https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sirius_(1837) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sirius_(1837) https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ap0dn/when_did_navies_begin_to_phase_out_sailingonly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ap0dn/when_...
  - skydhash 1y ago
    > superior in some areas, inferior in others, with the balance changing with technological advancement. So what are the areas that AI are superior to traditional programming? If your answer is suggestion, then refinement with traditional tooling, then it's just a workflow addon like contextual help, google search, and github code search. And I prefer the others because they are more reliable. We have six major phases in the software development lifecycle: 1) Planning, 2) Analysis, 3) Design, 4) Implementation, 5) Testing, 6) Maintenance. I failed to see how LLM assistance is objectively better even in part than not having it at all. Everything I've read is mostly anecdote where the root cause is inexperience and lack of knowledge.

JohnMakin 1y ago

They're not hiring juniors and now my roles consist of 10x as much busywork as they used to. People are expanding to fill these gaps; I'm not seeing much evidence that AI is "replacing" these people as much as businesses think they now don't need to hire junior developers. The thing is though, in 5 years there is not going to be as many seniors and if AI doesn't close that gap, businesses are going to feel it a lot more than whatever they think they're gaining by not hiring now.

burningChrome 1y ago
>> The thing is though, in 5 years there is not going to be as many seniors. This is already happening. Over the past 4-5 years I've known more than 30 senior devs either transition into areas other than development, or in many case, completely leave development all together. Most have left because they're getting stuck in situations like you describe. Having to pick up more managerial stuff and AI isn't capable of even doing junior level work so many just gave up and left. Yes, AI is helping in a lot of different ways to reduce development times, but the offloading of specific knowledge to these tools is hampering actual skill development. We're in for a real bumpy ride over the next decade as the industry comes to gripes with how to deal with a lot of bad things all happening at the same time.