7 ms·

Junior Roles Aren't Going Away

32 points by tylerg 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bigyabai 1y ago
> First, let's be clear, AI agents do remove roles. At previous companies I founded, I needed a team of developers to build a robust website, integrate it into deployment pipelines, configure hosting, make the UI look good, and handle all the moving parts. I needed marketers to create content, design images in Figma, Canva, and Photoshop, manually research, and write notes to customers and prospects. Now, AI agents can handle a huge portion of that. I don't believe a word of this. If you replaced your marketers and designers with ChatGPT and a SVG generator, then you shouldn't act surprised when your marketing doesn't work. Your entire thesis statement of "AI agents do remove roles" is unfounded if you refuse to show us metrics to qualitatively compare the success of AI versus human marketing. How do you know that AI isn't the reason your startups fail to find traction in an AI-saturated market? Do any of your businesses exhibit self-evident runaway success because of AI? It doesn't even sound like you're measuring.
- grahac 1y ago
  I agree that AI does not replace the best people in those roles. It can do an average to good job. Maybe it can reach top 40% of the industry? If you need the best UI or best marketing, humans are still netter. Those top human jobs won't go away for a while. With that in mind, if you just need average to good, AI can do a good job at a tiny fraction of the cost. So the average to good roles will start getting replaced. As examples, the sites tellmel.ai, and rivalsee.com for example were created without needing a UI or frontend designer. In the past I would have needed to hire a UI employee or consultant to do either of those at a very large expense (especially for the really good ones).
stalfosknight 1y ago
This is bullshit. Junior roles have already been extinct for quite a long time now. No place that's hiring will give you the time of day until you already have the word "Senior" in your title. But no one can explain where Seniors are supposed to come from though.
- grahac 1y ago
  Yeah right now that's certainly true. But my belief is those companies will soon realize that some of the people who they thought were junior are pretty adept at AI management - more adept than the senior people. And that skill will suddenly be more in demand than how well you can code an optimized sorting algorithm. Some will get there faster than others of course. But AI is changing things so quickly that it may happen faster than we think, given the state right now.
  - stalfosknight 1y ago
    I don't mean right now, I mean going as far back as 2018 at least when I had to go through a brutal slog over many months to get my first gig as a new software dev. I eventually ended up in a midlevel role and had to grow into it (I still feel like I found a Willy Wonka golden ticket). But it is infuriating to see people suggest that there is such a thing as junior level positions and that companies actually want to hire junior level people. That has been absolutely false for a very long time.
    - grahac 1y ago
      Totally fair. Sorry you had to go through that. Yeah the joke is companies want to hire someone who is already an expert in that role who is curious and a fast learner, without realizing that if someone is already an expert who is curious and a fast learner, they probably want a different role to grow into.
      - stalfosknight 1y ago
        I don't mean to shit on your article. I think the general gist of it is correct; what it means to be a software developer is going to radically change for all levels, not just we mere mortals without the magical word "Senior" in our titles. Being fluent in prompting and supervising AI agents are going to be more of the day to day than cranking out lines of code. I'm just (I think justifiably) a little salty because not that long ago LEARN TO CODE!!! was the mantra for those who wanted to step up into a middle class life and now every executive and their mother is frothing at the mouth over shoehorning AI into anything and everything and pulling up what little of the career ladder exists while they're at it.
Avicebron 1y ago
r/LinkedInLunatics is leaking again. That said I'm glad this founder is able to micromanage his AI, they sound like a very problematic person to actually work with as an engineer, and if screaming into the void of AI means he is no longer sending vague poorly worded demands, I guess that alone might be worth it
- grahac 1y ago
  LOL. AI is currently like a mid-level average to good engr who can write good code but ocassionally goes off the rails. Any engr on a team with those characteristics would be heavily vetted in reviews. Almost like a smart CS intern. If AI was amazing senior level engr, it would be a different story.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- spacemadness 1y ago
  “I believe I’m at the forefront of a trend…” Trademark LinkedIn. We’re all swimming in a sea of grifters.
coolThingsFirst 1y ago
A large chunk of junior roles have vanished. Tech is neither a lucrative nor an interesting career anymore. Prompting until you get a somewhat working solution is boring af. I dont want to tell an LLM what to code i want to do it myself. In every bullet point he has the AI word in it.
- akomtu 1y ago
  Pulling the lever of LLM until you see a winning combination is what programming will become. Only the minority will remember the engineering skills.
  - stalfosknight 1y ago
    That is incredibly depressing.
Anelya 1y ago
Your take on outdated university curricula totally hits the bulls eye here. We gotta revamp academic programs to match the fast-paced industry tech development and new trends. Junior roles are key, we just changed what the jr role needs to do - prompt, check, re-run, verify... but we need fresh grads ready to crush it with cutting-edge skills.
- Pet_Ant 1y ago
  Universities aren't job training. Universities are for getting foundational academic skills. You can use that to get a great foundation for applied knowledge, but that's not what they are for. Universities are measured by publications. During my internship my placement suggested on the feedback form at the end of term a focus on more upcoming skills like Flash, Silverlight, and Aero. 3 years ago we'd be telling students to learn blockchain. My education, which included foundational aspects like OS, ended up being more important when containers came around, even when it was "obvious" that Windows was the only OS anyone will use now. Universities are higher level foundations just like elementary and high school. Not job training. Best course is to get you four year, and then take a year or two for bootcamps and/or community college to get whatever is currently hot and disposable.
RyanOD 1y ago
I don't understand how anyone can get to the level where they "understand programming basics, architecture, and what good code looks like" without years of grinding code, collaborating, research, mistakes, refactoring, etc. To me, the idea that a Junior Developer would understand CS at that level or get there without writing code every day for a very long time seems highly unlikely. What am I not understanding?
- Stwerner 1y ago
  I look at it kind of similarly to what the rise of online poker did for texas hold'em. You had people who spent decades playing in person to learn enough to get to the highest tier, but when online poker came about people were able to play 4+ tables at once basically 24/7 at a higher hourly hand rate per table than was possible in person (let alone having access to analysis tools like Poker Tracker). People were able to get very good in a much shorter amount of time. I suspect we're going to see something similar with Junior talent across the board. A lot of the barriers to actually getting to the core of software engineering for example are going away, and you're going to be able to get orders of magnitude more trial and error attempts in than you previously could in the same amount of time.
  - oldandboring 1y ago
    You'll have to forgive me because I know literally nothing about competitive poker. Are there players whose experience is primarily online, who show up at in-person tournaments and lack the "soft skills" necessary to excel in that setting? Preventing themselves from exhibiting tells, etc. I'm not trying to relate this back to the AI/junior/senior developer question, I'm just curious about the dynamic in poker since you seem to know what you're talking about.
    - Stwerner 1y ago
      I can't speak for everyone, I've definitely seen people make the transition or at least bring in-person tournaments into the games they play. I suspect a lot do just prefer online because of how convenient it is and don't really explore in-person events. For me, there was definitely a high level of anxiety and nerves when I sat down at a table for the first time again after playing online for a while. But it gets easier and easier to shake that off and just get into the flow of watching betting patterns (which is the main thing you have to work with online) which to me was always the primary source of tells rather than anything physical. So maybe in my case the answer to your question is yes haha :) though it didn't seem to impact me negatively much.
recursivedoubts 1y ago
"Right. And where, exactly, do you think senior developers come from?"
- fch42 1y ago
  AI breeds them, in cosy vats warmed by the exhaust heat of a thousand GPUs.
somanyphotons 1y ago
Its not AI that took the junior roles, it's low supply of positions so the more experienced out-compete the juniors
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
The role of a junior will shift senior, thanks to AI leverage. The expected knowledge of a junior will shift senior, thanks to AI broadening what one person can do. The amount one junior can accomplish will increase thanks to AI. These things have been trends for decades. AI just keeps them going.

32 points by tylerg 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

> First, let's be clear, AI agents do remove roles. At previous companies I founded, I needed a team of developers to build a robust website, integrate it into deployment pipelines, configure hosting, make the UI look good, and handle all the moving parts. I needed marketers to create content, design images in Figma, Canva, and Photoshop, manually research, and write notes to customers and prospects. Now, AI agents can handle a huge portion of that. I don't believe a word of this. If you replaced your marketers and designers with ChatGPT and a SVG generator, then you shouldn't act surprised when your marketing doesn't work. Your entire thesis statement of "AI agents do remove roles" is unfounded if you refuse to show us metrics to qualitatively compare the success of AI versus human marketing. How do you know that AI isn't the reason your startups fail to find traction in an AI-saturated market? Do any of your businesses exhibit self-evident runaway success because of AI? It doesn't even sound like you're measuring.

grahac 1y ago
I agree that AI does not replace the best people in those roles. It can do an average to good job. Maybe it can reach top 40% of the industry? If you need the best UI or best marketing, humans are still netter. Those top human jobs won't go away for a while. With that in mind, if you just need average to good, AI can do a good job at a tiny fraction of the cost. So the average to good roles will start getting replaced. As examples, the sites tellmel.ai, and rivalsee.com for example were created without needing a UI or frontend designer. In the past I would have needed to hire a UI employee or consultant to do either of those at a very large expense (especially for the really good ones).

stalfosknight 1y ago

This is bullshit. Junior roles have already been extinct for quite a long time now. No place that's hiring will give you the time of day until you already have the word "Senior" in your title. But no one can explain where Seniors are supposed to come from though.

grahac 1y ago
Yeah right now that's certainly true. But my belief is those companies will soon realize that some of the people who they thought were junior are pretty adept at AI management - more adept than the senior people. And that skill will suddenly be more in demand than how well you can code an optimized sorting algorithm. Some will get there faster than others of course. But AI is changing things so quickly that it may happen faster than we think, given the state right now.
- stalfosknight 1y ago
  I don't mean right now, I mean going as far back as 2018 at least when I had to go through a brutal slog over many months to get my first gig as a new software dev. I eventually ended up in a midlevel role and had to grow into it (I still feel like I found a Willy Wonka golden ticket). But it is infuriating to see people suggest that there is such a thing as junior level positions and that companies actually want to hire junior level people. That has been absolutely false for a very long time.
  - grahac 1y ago
    Totally fair. Sorry you had to go through that. Yeah the joke is companies want to hire someone who is already an expert in that role who is curious and a fast learner, without realizing that if someone is already an expert who is curious and a fast learner, they probably want a different role to grow into.
    - stalfosknight 1y ago
      I don't mean to shit on your article. I think the general gist of it is correct; what it means to be a software developer is going to radically change for all levels, not just we mere mortals without the magical word "Senior" in our titles. Being fluent in prompting and supervising AI agents are going to be more of the day to day than cranking out lines of code. I'm just (I think justifiably) a little salty because not that long ago LEARN TO CODE!!! was the mantra for those who wanted to step up into a middle class life and now every executive and their mother is frothing at the mouth over shoehorning AI into anything and everything and pulling up what little of the career ladder exists while they're at it.

Avicebron 1y ago

r/LinkedInLunatics is leaking again. That said I'm glad this founder is able to micromanage his AI, they sound like a very problematic person to actually work with as an engineer, and if screaming into the void of AI means he is no longer sending vague poorly worded demands, I guess that alone might be worth it

grahac 1y ago
LOL. AI is currently like a mid-level average to good engr who can write good code but ocassionally goes off the rails. Any engr on a team with those characteristics would be heavily vetted in reviews. Almost like a smart CS intern. If AI was amazing senior level engr, it would be a different story.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
spacemadness 1y ago
“I believe I’m at the forefront of a trend…” Trademark LinkedIn. We’re all swimming in a sea of grifters.

coolThingsFirst 1y ago

A large chunk of junior roles have vanished. Tech is neither a lucrative nor an interesting career anymore. Prompting until you get a somewhat working solution is boring af. I dont want to tell an LLM what to code i want to do it myself. In every bullet point he has the AI word in it.

akomtu 1y ago
Pulling the lever of LLM until you see a winning combination is what programming will become. Only the minority will remember the engineering skills.
- stalfosknight 1y ago
  That is incredibly depressing.

Anelya 1y ago

Your take on outdated university curricula totally hits the bulls eye here. We gotta revamp academic programs to match the fast-paced industry tech development and new trends. Junior roles are key, we just changed what the jr role needs to do - prompt, check, re-run, verify... but we need fresh grads ready to crush it with cutting-edge skills.

Pet_Ant 1y ago
Universities aren't job training. Universities are for getting foundational academic skills. You can use that to get a great foundation for applied knowledge, but that's not what they are for. Universities are measured by publications. During my internship my placement suggested on the feedback form at the end of term a focus on more upcoming skills like Flash, Silverlight, and Aero. 3 years ago we'd be telling students to learn blockchain. My education, which included foundational aspects like OS, ended up being more important when containers came around, even when it was "obvious" that Windows was the only OS anyone will use now. Universities are higher level foundations just like elementary and high school. Not job training. Best course is to get you four year, and then take a year or two for bootcamps and/or community college to get whatever is currently hot and disposable.

RyanOD 1y ago

I don't understand how anyone can get to the level where they "understand programming basics, architecture, and what good code looks like" without years of grinding code, collaborating, research, mistakes, refactoring, etc. To me, the idea that a Junior Developer would understand CS at that level or get there without writing code every day for a very long time seems highly unlikely. What am I not understanding?

Stwerner 1y ago
I look at it kind of similarly to what the rise of online poker did for texas hold'em. You had people who spent decades playing in person to learn enough to get to the highest tier, but when online poker came about people were able to play 4+ tables at once basically 24/7 at a higher hourly hand rate per table than was possible in person (let alone having access to analysis tools like Poker Tracker). People were able to get very good in a much shorter amount of time. I suspect we're going to see something similar with Junior talent across the board. A lot of the barriers to actually getting to the core of software engineering for example are going away, and you're going to be able to get orders of magnitude more trial and error attempts in than you previously could in the same amount of time.
- oldandboring 1y ago
  You'll have to forgive me because I know literally nothing about competitive poker. Are there players whose experience is primarily online, who show up at in-person tournaments and lack the "soft skills" necessary to excel in that setting? Preventing themselves from exhibiting tells, etc. I'm not trying to relate this back to the AI/junior/senior developer question, I'm just curious about the dynamic in poker since you seem to know what you're talking about.
  - Stwerner 1y ago
    I can't speak for everyone, I've definitely seen people make the transition or at least bring in-person tournaments into the games they play. I suspect a lot do just prefer online because of how convenient it is and don't really explore in-person events. For me, there was definitely a high level of anxiety and nerves when I sat down at a table for the first time again after playing online for a while. But it gets easier and easier to shake that off and just get into the flow of watching betting patterns (which is the main thing you have to work with online) which to me was always the primary source of tells rather than anything physical. So maybe in my case the answer to your question is yes haha :) though it didn't seem to impact me negatively much.

recursivedoubts 1y ago

"Right. And where, exactly, do you think senior developers come from?"

fch42 1y ago
AI breeds them, in cosy vats warmed by the exhaust heat of a thousand GPUs.

somanyphotons 1y ago

Its not AI that took the junior roles, it's low supply of positions so the more experienced out-compete the juniors

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

The role of a junior will shift senior, thanks to AI leverage. The expected knowledge of a junior will shift senior, thanks to AI broadening what one person can do. The amount one junior can accomplish will increase thanks to AI. These things have been trends for decades. AI just keeps them going.