15 ms·

If nobody hires juniors, then where are the seniors supposed to come from?

by grunder_advice 1y ago

bl0rg 1y ago
In a few years, will we need seniors?
- j45 1y ago
  It's not that good, and almost always more complex than the essence a senior person will boil thing down to.
- dietr1ch 1y ago
  There's an old and famous quote around computers not having morals, and thus computers requiring people on top of them that can steward systems and be hold accountable. Besides morals, you'll always need people in the interface between the computers and the world. Maybe they won't write too much code, but they'll need to specify and verify behaviours anyway.
  - jay_kyburz 1y ago
    wishful thinking. Governments around the world are relying on algorithms to decide who can have welfare or who is cheating on taxes. With the rise of AI it will only get worse.
    - jraph 1y ago
      These algorithms were designed and verified by humans.
- shinycode 1y ago
  Non deterministic software will never produce 100% of the time perfect results. So we will need humans with knowledge to verify up to when an other technology will be able to build enough trust to avoid human reviews. With 2000 line very precise prompts, Claude code finishes saying the code is ready for production and there is still anomalies and bugs that it should have catched but didn’t. Good luck trusting 100% of your business on such technologies.
j45 1y ago
There needs to be new kinds of juniors, with driving/thinking skills included. Not sure if there is a single silver bullet to solve this, but one thing is all juniors could start building things only for fun and solving small problems they understand (ala YC advice), and once solved, allow room to build it better each time.
GMoromisato 1y ago
It will be like med school. Juniors will pay to get trained (or get scholarships, etc.)
- joshdavham 1y ago
  Weren’t they already doing this? College/bootcamps is precisely that: paying to get trained.
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    It’s not about skills, it’s about the formality of having X years of professional experience. College and boot camps won’t get you anywhere.
  - michaelnovati 1y ago
    Apprenticeships with government incentive are better examples
joshdavham 1y ago
Exactly. It actually doesn’t make sense when you think about it - the idea that entry level roles will be cleanly eliminated. Certainly there could be a period with drastically fewer entry level roles, but that logically can not remain the case.
RivieraKid 1y ago
By the time this becomes a problem, seniors won't be needed either.
- tonfa 1y ago
  That seems to be the sentiment from decision makers from what I've seen.
  - ZiiS 1y ago
    Neither will decision makers
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Sure. Unfortunately for those of who like getting paid, decision makers' opinions are what determine who gets hired.
- general1726 1y ago
  And that's going to be before or after customers will be able to exactly specify what they want and will be able to tell you where the error is including stack trace and set of steps which they did before the crash, not just "it is not working"
xena 1y ago
This is something I've thought about a lot. Have a few thousand words that may resonate with you: https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/rolling-ladder-behind-us/ https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/rolling-ladder-behind-us/
- dang 1y ago
  A couple hundred comments on those few thousand words: Rolling the ladder up behind us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44328894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44328894 - June 2025 (201 comments)
jiggawatts 1y ago
Junior developers are the equivalent of the draftsmen that used to work under architects. Just like how CAD has almost entirely eliminated that line of work, the same thing will happen in software development. Only the “architects” will remain. There is an implicit assumption made by the people concerned about junior devs disappearing that that’s where senior developers come from. The reality is that almost junior developers never gain significantly better skill, no matter how their age or title. I regularly work with people with decades of “experience” that still have no idea how to use a database engine. A real senior developer could write their own database engine from scratch. That’s the difference!
- oceansky 1y ago
  How would you verify if a candidate know how to use a database engine? This can actually have a lot of depth
  - jiggawatts 1y ago
    I simply ask the candidate what a B-Tree is and how a database engine would use one. If they don’t know that, then the database engine internals will forever remain a mysterious black box to them. Explaining each of the four letters in ACID is the follow-up question if they pass. These are the equivalent of “why do we put steel rebar into concrete?” If you can’t answer these questions immediately upon graduating then you cannot ever be responsible for anything. You can only be entrusted to copy or “fill in the blanks” where an anctual engineer worked out the design.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 1y ago
  I think this can be a bit unfair too. I learned to use database engines because I did a lot of solo work. Also learned a teeny tiny bit in school. But I never touch a DB directly anymore even though I'm a "backend" SWE. How is one to gain such experience in a huge company that pigeon holes folks into such specific roles? I mean I guess they can choose to jump teams or jobs every couple years to gain some breadth, but it seems cruel to force people to hop around to move up the ladder. (Even though I admit this is still the fastest way, but for different reasons!)
jonas21 1y ago
It's likely that the skills you'd learn as an entry-level engineer today will be mostly irrelevant to being a senior 10 years from now -- just as knowing how to write a program on punch cards is irrelevant to today's engineers. Seniors will have to come from somewhere, but it wouldn't be through this pipeline, even if companies were still hiring at full rate for entry-level work. For some just getting into the field, this could be a great opportunity -- if you can figure out where the puck is heading, you can skate directly there.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  Couldn't disagree more. Learning the basic building blocks of programming (which is stuff that LLMs can do at a high level when dealing with small, self-contained problems) is critical because understanding the low-level details is so important when you're applying systems-level thinking. I've interviewed more that a few "software architects" who couldn't put together a for loop, and these folks were largely just BS artists and PowerPoint generators.
  - rediscovery 1y ago
    The only skill set that exists in knowledge work is formal logic. But yeah I'm sure increasing energy input into symbolic systems will not increase their entropy and thus the demand for workers capable of formal logic to keep it in check. Because dumping representations of formal logic on a exponentially increasing repository of compressed data will surely start giving out output with higher informational content than the input. Any time now. Just double the size of the model a few more times and we will start getting lower entropy outcomes for free.
LtWorf 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioi7DPTHG6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioi7DPTHG6A
michaelnovati 1y ago
MIT & Stanford
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
AI is an entropy engine for everything it touches. It sucks out all the momentum for short term gain. Long term it brings decay. The foundations of entire industries aren't going to be renewed in order to realize short term savings. And once the savings are baked in, the expectation of them makes it nearly impossible to restore the lost investment.

If nobody hires juniors, then where are the seniors supposed to come from?

bl0rg 1y ago

In a few years, will we need seniors?

j45 1y ago
It's not that good, and almost always more complex than the essence a senior person will boil thing down to.
dietr1ch 1y ago
There's an old and famous quote around computers not having morals, and thus computers requiring people on top of them that can steward systems and be hold accountable. Besides morals, you'll always need people in the interface between the computers and the world. Maybe they won't write too much code, but they'll need to specify and verify behaviours anyway.
- jay_kyburz 1y ago
  wishful thinking. Governments around the world are relying on algorithms to decide who can have welfare or who is cheating on taxes. With the rise of AI it will only get worse.
  - jraph 1y ago
    These algorithms were designed and verified by humans.
shinycode 1y ago
Non deterministic software will never produce 100% of the time perfect results. So we will need humans with knowledge to verify up to when an other technology will be able to build enough trust to avoid human reviews. With 2000 line very precise prompts, Claude code finishes saying the code is ready for production and there is still anomalies and bugs that it should have catched but didn’t. Good luck trusting 100% of your business on such technologies.

j45 1y ago

There needs to be new kinds of juniors, with driving/thinking skills included. Not sure if there is a single silver bullet to solve this, but one thing is all juniors could start building things only for fun and solving small problems they understand (ala YC advice), and once solved, allow room to build it better each time.

GMoromisato 1y ago

It will be like med school. Juniors will pay to get trained (or get scholarships, etc.)

joshdavham 1y ago
Weren’t they already doing this? College/bootcamps is precisely that: paying to get trained.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  It’s not about skills, it’s about the formality of having X years of professional experience. College and boot camps won’t get you anywhere.
- michaelnovati 1y ago
  Apprenticeships with government incentive are better examples

joshdavham 1y ago

Exactly. It actually doesn’t make sense when you think about it - the idea that entry level roles will be cleanly eliminated. Certainly there could be a period with drastically fewer entry level roles, but that logically can not remain the case.

RivieraKid 1y ago

By the time this becomes a problem, seniors won't be needed either.

tonfa 1y ago
That seems to be the sentiment from decision makers from what I've seen.
- ZiiS 1y ago
  Neither will decision makers
- ben_w 1y ago
  Sure. Unfortunately for those of who like getting paid, decision makers' opinions are what determine who gets hired.
general1726 1y ago
And that's going to be before or after customers will be able to exactly specify what they want and will be able to tell you where the error is including stack trace and set of steps which they did before the crash, not just "it is not working"

xena 1y ago

This is something I've thought about a lot. Have a few thousand words that may resonate with you: https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/rolling-ladder-behind-us/ https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/rolling-ladder-behind-us/

dang 1y ago
A couple hundred comments on those few thousand words: Rolling the ladder up behind us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44328894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44328894 - June 2025 (201 comments)

jiggawatts 1y ago

Junior developers are the equivalent of the draftsmen that used to work under architects. Just like how CAD has almost entirely eliminated that line of work, the same thing will happen in software development. Only the “architects” will remain. There is an implicit assumption made by the people concerned about junior devs disappearing that that’s where senior developers come from. The reality is that almost junior developers never gain significantly better skill, no matter how their age or title. I regularly work with people with decades of “experience” that still have no idea how to use a database engine. A real senior developer could write their own database engine from scratch. That’s the difference!

oceansky 1y ago
How would you verify if a candidate know how to use a database engine? This can actually have a lot of depth
- jiggawatts 1y ago
  I simply ask the candidate what a B-Tree is and how a database engine would use one. If they don’t know that, then the database engine internals will forever remain a mysterious black box to them. Explaining each of the four letters in ACID is the follow-up question if they pass. These are the equivalent of “why do we put steel rebar into concrete?” If you can’t answer these questions immediately upon graduating then you cannot ever be responsible for anything. You can only be entrusted to copy or “fill in the blanks” where an anctual engineer worked out the design.
8n4vidtmkvmk 1y ago
I think this can be a bit unfair too. I learned to use database engines because I did a lot of solo work. Also learned a teeny tiny bit in school. But I never touch a DB directly anymore even though I'm a "backend" SWE. How is one to gain such experience in a huge company that pigeon holes folks into such specific roles? I mean I guess they can choose to jump teams or jobs every couple years to gain some breadth, but it seems cruel to force people to hop around to move up the ladder. (Even though I admit this is still the fastest way, but for different reasons!)

jonas21 1y ago

It's likely that the skills you'd learn as an entry-level engineer today will be mostly irrelevant to being a senior 10 years from now -- just as knowing how to write a program on punch cards is irrelevant to today's engineers. Seniors will have to come from somewhere, but it wouldn't be through this pipeline, even if companies were still hiring at full rate for entry-level work. For some just getting into the field, this could be a great opportunity -- if you can figure out where the puck is heading, you can skate directly there.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
Couldn't disagree more. Learning the basic building blocks of programming (which is stuff that LLMs can do at a high level when dealing with small, self-contained problems) is critical because understanding the low-level details is so important when you're applying systems-level thinking. I've interviewed more that a few "software architects" who couldn't put together a for loop, and these folks were largely just BS artists and PowerPoint generators.
- rediscovery 1y ago
  The only skill set that exists in knowledge work is formal logic. But yeah I'm sure increasing energy input into symbolic systems will not increase their entropy and thus the demand for workers capable of formal logic to keep it in check. Because dumping representations of formal logic on a exponentially increasing repository of compressed data will surely start giving out output with higher informational content than the input. Any time now. Just double the size of the model a few more times and we will start getting lower entropy outcomes for free.

LtWorf 1y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioi7DPTHG6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioi7DPTHG6A

michaelnovati 1y ago

MIT & Stanford

_DeadFred_ 1y ago

AI is an entropy engine for everything it touches. It sucks out all the momentum for short term gain. Long term it brings decay. The foundations of entire industries aren't going to be renewed in order to realize short term savings. And once the savings are baked in, the expectation of them makes it nearly impossible to restore the lost investment.