10 ms·

What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

• comprev 4mo ago
  For those without a FT subscription: https://archive.ph/DrFSW https://archive.ph/DrFSW
• smarm52 4mo ago
  The paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6787638 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6787638 Unclear if it's been peer reviewed. The abstract looks fairly convincing. But it is argued against by the majority of research on this topic.
  • nyrikki 4mo ago
    The one glaring omission the jumps out to me is Holmström's theorem like effects of incentives. There has been a huge shift towards metrics, to the point that managers are often forced to or at least commonly believe they are forced to game those metrics. It is challenging to take strategic risks when you have to focus on metrics which cannot measure let alone value those choices.
  • nitwit005 4mo ago
    The first handful of sentences from the abstract were a rather convincing case against the paper to me.
    • throwaway2037 4mo ago
      You only needed to read the "first handful of sentences from the abstract" to dismiss an EIGHTY-TWO page paper? Can you share a sample sentence and what you don't like about it?
      • nitwit005 4mo ago
        > Can you share a sample sentence and what you don't like about it? I suspect you can find the first sentences without aid. Try reading them yourself first.
• uxhacker 4mo ago
  I have found working with remote first natives that the narrowness of their knowledge is also very high. When you work in an office there is a some knowledge transfer happening having lunch with the guy in accounts or the women in the sales team. This non structured learning is missed in remote work.
  • embedding-shape 4mo ago
    Yeah, that seems obvious to me, even to me as a programmer who likes to be able to take long stretches of solitude to really nail the solution to a problem. The indirect transfer of knowledge, understanding and alignment that happens when you're not just sitting at your desk working on your things, seems invaluable once you've had the experience of a workplace where that happens naturally and seems to be able to "steer the entire ship". Finding a way to make this happen in a remote environment feels like what's missing right now. I know there been some Slack/chat apps that kind of force those kind of meetings, but it's very different from what happens with real humans in real places in close proximity to each other.
    • uxhacker 4mo ago
      Because often it happens so randomly. Sometimes it takes two people to be on a natural break at the same time, hungry at the same time, or just how two people got on at a meeting.
    • andy99 4mo ago
      The best remote jobs I’ve had included many hours a week of no-agenda calls with colleagues, just catching up and talking about what we’re up to. This is very hard to make happen. Most people don’t want to, don’t see it as work, or more likely just don’t know anyone well enough to call and shoot the shit. But imo this is the only real way. Just doing transactional interactions, it’s very tough to stay well connected.
      • kaashif 4mo ago
        Doing that kind of thing over Zoom just always felt fake and not fun to me. Maybe some people are wired differently where that works, and I'm stuck having to meet people in person to connect with them for real. Which could be a disadvantage for me.
• mattdeboard 4mo ago
  The way this position conforms to the interests of the capital class, and conflicts with those of the labor class, is a red flag. It simultaneously and conveniently: 1. takes the heat off AI blowback 2. synergizes perfectly with "RTO" mandates (to the extent this needed synergy to become A Widespread Thing) On that basis alone, I'll wait for further analysis. Edit: to be clear I'm no anti-AI holdout, and I actually don't mind working from the office (which i do 4x a week). Just observing.
  • graemep 4mo ago
    RTO mandates are primarily pushed by the managerial class, not the capitalist class. Both want to blame AI so its not clear they want to avoid doing so.
    • iterateoften 4mo ago
      In my experience, investors push hard to go in office when fundraising
    • atomicnumber3 4mo ago
      RTO is primarily pushed by the capitalist class, and managers are just stuck in the middle. No good manager wants pissed off employees, but managers who push back on the capitalist class do not stay managers long.
    • greekrich92 4mo ago
      Managers, like police and prosecutors, are enforcers for the capitalist class. This is why they are not part of the working class. Managers do the job of squeezing surplus value from workers, rather than producing real Value themselves. Relationship to capital determines class.
      • graemep 4mo ago
        That argument only holds if you think RTO increases output. Infact it has to create more value than the costs t imposes otherwise it reduces profits. I am not convinced this is true. I think your overall picture is simplistic too. Many managers (and police, and prosecutors) act contrary to the interests and wants of the capitalist class. Managers have their own interests which are frequently at odds with those of their employer. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/agency-theory https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/agency-...
• exabrial 4mo ago
  AI is not responsible for anything at the moment, except making existing senior developers reasonably more efficient for sleeve of tasks, but not the tasks that take the most time. Saying "we don't need as many staff because AI" is an oft-repeated trope because it sounds like a reasonable excuse to fire people. It's nearly impossible to back up the claim with any measurable method, and investors will look aside on the mismanagement and/or ridiculously over-engineered/over-complicated custom tech stacks companies run if they say "AI" anywhere in their reports.
  • marcosdumay 4mo ago
    Apparently there has been some AI-caused firing on companies that spent so much on AI that needed to fire people to make their short-term numbers not break. From the way people are talking, Facebook seems to be in that category. There is probably some AI-caused firing coming soon on companies that vibe-coded so much that people abandon their products. I expect Microsoft start is on Github. I have been repeating for months that AI hasn't caused any firing. But it doesn't seem to be technically correct anymore.
    • indoordin0saur 4mo ago
      > companies that spent so much on AI that they needed to fire people to make their short-term numbers not break The observation that AI layoffs would be self-fulfilling prophecy is one I haven't heard before but I'm inclined to agree with it.
  • munk-a 4mo ago
    AI is absolutely responsible for executive suites dumping huge budgets that could be more productively elsewhere. There are extremely helpful tools out there but people are being too gullible when it comes to advertised ROIs and the blame inevitably falls on engineering, not management, when all the devs fail to 10x overnight.
    • Pavilion2095 4mo ago
      A text generator can't be responsible for decisions that people make. You're giving them too much agency. Idk how they did it, but so many people seem to hate AI instead of people who are pushing it.
• asdff 4mo ago
  Hiring was strong a couple years ago during peak remote work.
• steviedotboston 4mo ago
  I couldn't imagine working remote straight out of college. I'm very glad I work remote now though.
  • flextheruler 4mo ago
    Yeah it's awful and the lack of any sympathy from people further along in their career with kids made it even worse. Everyone thinks it's great but I literally developed depression and anxiety from isolation.
    • grolingor 4mo ago
      Should those other people be made to RTO and spend less time around their kids, to fill in your isolated lifestyle?
      • bzhang255 4mo ago
        Isn't that kind of how society works? i.e. If a senior employee benefitted from having close mentorship and a strong social network when they were a junior, then they may wish to pay it forward by being present and mentoring juniors now that they're a senior.
        • grolingor 4mo ago
          Wishing to go to office and make friends is very different from forcing everyone to do so. Many of us remote senior workers have rich social lives and were able to upskill ourselves, without needing coworkers to substitute for a failing social experience.
          • flextheruler 4mo ago
            Begrudging more senior employees for lacking sympathy for younger employees who feel left out by remote work is not the same as begrudging them for working remote. Regardless, I would say it's a fair hypothesis that the vast majority of senior employees now would have reacted negatively to working remotely out of college. My experience and my peers has been that it's a significant negative to working relationships or gaining a mentor which is crucial for younger people. I see no reason why this would not be a universal experience. Studies back this up even before remote work was a thing. One I recall of the top of the dome was that it was actually cheaper over a lifetime in many occupations to go out to eat for lunch with coworkers than packing a lunch because just going out to eat with work peers had an immensely positive impact on promotions and networking. If just going out to lunch does that you can easily extrapolate to what effect not even working in the same place physically has. I cannot find the exact study that concluded this but here's a recent one making a similar case. I know this isn't the one I've recalled since I read it back in high school. This one speaks to the benefits to the employee and employer. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8638-employees-eat-together.html https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8638-employees-eat-togethe...
• aiauthoritydev 4mo ago
  Intial folks in gold rush benefits. Later folks don't. It happens everywhere. This weak junior hiring was seen by everyone 10 years ago when our politicians were asking coal miners to learn to code.
• RealCodingOtaku 4mo ago
  I have worked with graduates joining remotely during the pandemic, like most graduates they also lacked the skill to work in a real environment, but we can teach them, it's easy. But during the AI boom, the people who could teach the graduates were let go, leaving only a handful of senior engineers that had to "increase their productivity" while also mentoring the juniors. Guess where people cut corners to keep their job longer?
  • Groxx 4mo ago
    Yeah, I've had (and seen) interns and new-hires do fantastically during COVID. You get what you pay for / put the work in for. If you're just hiring them, saying "read these docs and ship some PRs", and ignoring them, it's not too hard to predict what'll happen. Engage at least as much as you would in person (more likely more, because you don't have passive hints about struggles), and it works out fine.
• napolux 4mo ago
  It's not AI, it's workers asking to work from home. Yeah.
  • svantana 4mo ago
    No, that's not the reason they claim. From the paper: > WFH has been shown to raise the cost of supervising and monitoring workers, and can slow on-the-job learning
• Devasta 4mo ago
  I have been working since 2008, in that time the only periods my manager has been within a hundred miles of me has been between 2010-2013 and 2015-2017. Even if I pretend for a moment that a generation that is younger than Google is somehow unable to collaborate online, remote work has been the mode of operation of most people even before COVID, the only question is whether they are sitting in traffic or not first.
• mvfc 4mo ago
  Now tell me which executives ever did the math on how remote working makes juniors take longer to learn and then took hiring decisions based on that math. This all seems good in theory, but doesn’t seem to hold out in the real world if you’ve ever worked with higher ups in your life
• ltbarcly3 4mo ago
  In 2026 a Junior Engineer is just Claude Code with a bad UI, higher latency, and extra steps. Literally. I wouldn't even considering hiring a junior engineer at this point. The ROI was already barely breakeven for any but the top of the top junior engineers as they are likely to move on before they are meaningfully contributing. With AI in the mix the ROI for Junior Engineers is strongly negative for 2 reasons: 1. (obvious) I can just have Claude Code do the work a junior engineer would have done with faster turnaround and generally better results. 2. (less obvious) Junior engineers are going to just turn around and use Claude Code, so now I'm talking to an AI and playing the telephone game, and the Junior engineer isn't going to learn much if anything in the process.
  • netsharc 4mo ago
    Can I add: 1a. If you train it enough, one day you'll be able to trust that it's going to be able to execute what you want correctly, and you don't have to meticulously go through each line to find any issues. to your list of arguments? Because just like a junior human, training Claude will make it a capable senior developer, right...? /S because this is the Internet.
    • ltbarcly3 4mo ago
      You didn't read my comment. Literally addressed this point when I said "the Junior engineer isn't going to learn much if anything in the process"
  • qwe----3 4mo ago
    The 2nd is very true
  • hombre_fatal 4mo ago
    People don't want to hear this, but it's true, especially the part about the junior developer just using Claude Code themselves. We may still be too early on the curve of AI usage for AI to be the major driver of the labor market changes, but we also have no clue about what to do about it. Often the conversation puts "Using AI ourself" at odds with "Delegating to a junior developer", but the junior developer is going to be using AI just like the rest of us further bringing into question the value of junior developers (and eventually senior engineers). What really is the next step? (Rhetorical question since nobody knows)
• HarHarVeryFunny 4mo ago
  What if hiring offshore developers is to blame for not hiring onshore ones?
  • mrweasel 4mo ago
    If remote work is to blame, wouldn't that also indicate that you couldn't outsource part of your work to lower salaried countries. A lot of companies have their senior staff at the home office, then outsource the more trivial tasks to e.g. India. Managing people is hard, managing remote people makes it hard to hide that you're a poor manager. If you want to allow for remote work, you need to invest in management training. You should do that for onsite as well, but it will be less visible that you if you skip that step. What if unrealistic economical growth is to blame for weak junior hiring?
    • HarHarVeryFunny 4mo ago
      I don't see that remote work (using domestic workers) is to blame for lack of hiring, although it does have other problems: - Less collaboration/communication - Kills local businesses Yes, I was being sarcastic. Outsourcing is of course a huge jobs and money drain from the US, but CEOs and the FT don't want to admit this obvious fact - they'd prefer to blame AI or remote working.
• SilverElfin 4mo ago
  Or how about we make remote work mandatory where possible so the economy lets people live their lives. Getting back unpaid time from commutes and being able to reorganize work time freely makes a huge difference.
  • jay_kyburz 4mo ago
    Haha, Your still supposed to actually work when you're at home.
• neya 4mo ago
  If my location dictates the type of employees your organisation needs / doesn't need, then yeah, you pretty much over-hired to begin with and just lack accountability. Hence trying to blame it on everyone and everything else except yourself. Respectfully.
• dividefuel 4mo ago
  In my anecdotal experience in a FAANG, weak junior hiring started during the hiring freezes in mid 2022, and was made worse by the layoff cycles that began soon after. Once you know headcount is going to be extremely tight indefinitely, you want to use your precious few slots to hire someone that can deliver value pretty quickly, rather than take years to coach up. It personally seems hard to connect that to remote work as that had been going for 2 years and in between was the largest hiring burst we'd done, which included many junior folks. Though admittedly I'm biased as a remote worker.
  • Eridrus 4mo ago
    And this is why people do studies, because anecdotal evidence is a hypothesis at best.
    • tibbar 4mo ago
      Given how many studies have built-in sampling bias or other surprising assumptions, I still welcome people gut-checking it vs their experience. (Plus, the stories are interesting, right?)
• marcosdumay 4mo ago
  There's a paywall, so I won't be able to read anything post the title. But let's not pretend reality enters the decision-making of the large tech company at any point, for any kind of decision.
• ef2k 4mo ago
  It's telling how rhetoric and conjecture are now normalized in company and business culture. When we were at the peak of remote work, companies were reporting record high revenues.
  • atomicnumber3 4mo ago
    Yeah. Capitalism has never been less about actual profits and efficiency than it is right now. They just tout whatever random thing they're currently doing, regardless of why they're doing it or whether it was voluntary or not, is great and producing amazing results.
• aspbee555 4mo ago
  I got significantly more work accomplished when I worked remotely. There was tons of work I could not do from the office as people needed the systems I need to work on and could only be done out of hours/remotely. When in the office I got a lot of people complaining/pissed I was leaving early because I got there an hour or more before everyone so I could get more work done/do the work on systems they needed. The only thing I got while in the office was constant interruptions for things a junior could have handled. Meetings was a bad word, never allowed, so there was really no reason for me to be there constantly (I could have done most of my job remotely and gone into the office once or twice a week) I hired a junior I was eager to mentor/train to replace me, they proceeded to throw endless things I did at them expecting them to fill the multiple hats I was filling (to the point they pushed them to work on very dangerous equipment and got themselves hurt) Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't I absolutely loved the work I did. I GTFO of that misery that was only miserable/got me crucified due to the stupid shit people made up in their head instead of the actual work I did
• giancarlostoro 4mo ago
  Companies used to invest in building up their employees and even in retaining them by giving competitive pay. I can hire any junior developer and train them to be a better developer, unless they themselves do not want to be a better developer, I cant fight lack of motivation. A lot of senior developer roles list things that make it sound like senior devs are supposed to mentor other devs but they never seem to do so.
• bastawhiz 4mo ago
  Junior hiring was clearly depressed thanks to COVID, but AI has absolutely made that depression worse. We know this because it's what the tech leaders keep saying. They can't fucking shut up about it. It's as though the only idea any tech CEO has had in the last year is "what if we gave our best engineer 1000 agents and a case of Red Bull and fired everyone else?" Historically you had to hire junior engineers, because you needed the help. Now there's a [theoretical, purely imaginary] world where you don't, because agents will magically do that work for you. Nobody is losing sleep over the effect this has on talent as a whole, because that's a problem for someone else in the future.
• munk-a 4mo ago
  It's mismanagement, a prevalence of PE pushing profit margins as thin as possible, and the inevitable feeling of an oncoming recession. Mismanagement and PE both push to prioritizing short term gains (something you can use to justify your position/investment today) at the cost of long term profitability. No one is getting a bonus for having a great quarter in 2046 when your new project has turned you into a trillion dollar company. Executives tend to be very gullible and believe the department head that will claim it wasn't R&D but the new slick UX that 10x'd the company. Add to that the economy, especially after the disastrous Trump administration, which we can all plainly see as an oncoming train heading straight towards us, and even those who would optimistically advocate for long term budgeting in good times are in baton down the hatches mode. Hiring juniors is an excellent long term strategy that takes time to pay off - you're much better off having a mix of labor that can mix bold initiative and raw enthusiasm with prudence and planning - and those junior devs today will turn into highly skilled professionals with a deep understanding of your platform in half a decade or so. But when times are lean that's difficult to justify. I wouldn't shift all the blame away from AI though, this isn't a singular cause thing - working for a PE owned firm we're now on the hook for 200/mo anthropic seats owing to our overlords making a horrible deal. The current brand of AI is a rent-seeking technology that's pulling funds out of the working areas of the economy to fund its insane R&D concepts while more traditional AI applications that have proven utility are languishing,
• CompoundEyes 4mo ago
  Large companies opting to hire several overseas engineers into their GCC for way less pay than a single domestic junior is a factor as well.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• drivebyhooting 4mo ago
  If people working in the office leaves less time for child care, doing laundry and house chores, thereby leading to more outsourcing, then indeed working from home reduces GDP. It’s also possible that work from home is more efficient as a societal level, but any company willing to defect gets more efficiency for themselves by externalizing the opportunity cost.
• malephex 4mo ago
  I don't want to go back to the office, and one of the reasons is dealing with junior devs in a way where I can't pause notifications. I think the article might have a point Well eff them. This will weed out the weak, and we'll all be better off without commuting and open plan offices!
• h4kunamata 4mo ago
  They lack experience when working within real environments while being mentored, within a virtual environment where they have no skill to know what to do, just make things even more complicated. AI is not to blame here, but their own lack of experience which does require exposure to real environments.
• qwe----3 4mo ago
  Didn't Netflix do fine for decades (2?) only hiring senior+?
  • folkrav 4mo ago
    Would have Netflix had much of a senior+ applicant pool without the entire industry around it hiring and training the juniors they didn't?
    • marciob 4mo ago
      that's true, but it doesn't invalidate the claiming, Netflix outsourced the training step.
• cosmic_cheese 4mo ago
  From the corner of the industry visible to me, junior hiring was quite weak even prior to the pandemic. It existed but took considerable searching compared to mid-level and senior roles. Most companies wanted someone who could hit the ground running and not need much training or guidance.
• madrox 4mo ago
  I worked at a fully remote company that did the best job hiring juniors in my 20 year career. The talent and enthusiasm in that pool was great and really injected something into teams. What changed was ZIRP ending. The layoffs from that were real, and the managers who can't hire a ton angle for more senior people instead. The junior culture changed overnight.
  • vineyardmike 4mo ago
    ZIRP alone isn’t even the full financial story - there was a time bomb tax change from a 2017 bill that impacted R&D (most software work) and that took effect in 2023. But it’s fairly visible that big companies (eg Meta) that are spending a lot on AI are actually changing spending on headcount and hiring to maintain margins. It’s not the efficiency of the workers, it’s the maintenance of margins with big new spending.
    • jvanderbot 4mo ago
      My first and only layoff was effective 1h before that law went into effect. 1,000s of us were shunted off b/c an entire research arm was canned due to the changing cost of research s/w teams. I'm poorer but happier now b/c of it. That job was nuts.
      • mexicocitinluez 4mo ago
        I took a decent sized pay cut about 6 years ago to join a small company and build out our own product knowing that I may not get a raise for awhile but got to work on something cool with people I liked and I haven't regreted it for a moment. Looking forward to waking up to do work is a wild feeling.
        • madrox 4mo ago
          I'm with you. I don't think we talk enough about careerism and how toxic it can be.
        • sweetheart 4mo ago
• atleastoptimal 4mo ago
  Many people in the industry reeeeally want AI not to be the real cause of the layoffs for some reason.
• class3shock 4mo ago
  Weak junior hiring is due to: - Longtime trends of companies trying to externalize training costs. - Avoiding hiring in general due to uncertainty in the economy. - Companies dumping tons of money into AI thus having to cut money from other places, particularly ones that don't add much value in the quarter (internships).
  • Grimburger 4mo ago
    > companies trying to externalize training costs Why shouldn't they? You're commenting on a website where the common if not overwhelming view is that people should move jobs every 2 years or they are going to lose out.
    • elictronic 4mo ago
      Tragedy of the commons, prisoners dilemma. Externalizing costs is a great short term strategy, for startups. We really should regulate any company over a certain size to force them to pay for their externalities but we all know they won’t happen. I’m sure this won’t have any lasting consequences or lead to the collapse of any economies.
      • MagicMoonlight 4mo ago
        In the UK they do have to pay a levy to fund apprenticeships, then they can claim money back to pay for apprenticeships. They also give preference in contracts to companies who hire apprentices. It’s been very successful. Huge companies, including tech companies, will hire swathes of young people to fill apprentice slots.
    • DangitBobby 4mo ago
      Why do they hold that view, you reckon?
    • class3shock 4mo ago
      But a big reason people only stay two years because we have had decades of companies gutting every incentive to stay somewhere longterm. Whether or not companies should or shouldn't in their particular case is hard to answer generally. I am in an adjacent field to software and work on products that have lifetimes measured in decades. In that area short term thinking has been incredibly detrimental to organizations. I would also think investing in educating people that are going to work in an industry or are working in an industry will be a net positive to that industry. That is more a vibe based assertion than fact based though.
• sorry_outta_gas 4mo ago
  [dead]
• c0rruptbytes 4mo ago
  we hired a few juniors at our fully remote company - no issue this is ft trying to help their real estate portfolio
• bradleyy 4mo ago
  What if Financial Times has a vested interest in the real estate industry, and therefore wants RTO mandates? Something something AI I mean.
  • aaron695 4mo ago
    [dead]
  • jjtheblunt 4mo ago
    i'm glad reading your comment, because i nearly always get that feeling with FT articles, and very often with Economist patronizing subset of articles.
    • throwaway2037 4mo ago
      Can you provide some example financial/economic newspapers and magazines that do not give you "that feeling"?
      • jjtheblunt 4mo ago
        Deutsche Welle and usually Reuters, sometimes AP News. To your point, it _is_ somewhat random
        • throwaway2037 4mo ago
          None of your examples are "financial/economic newspapers and magazines". Rather, they are general news sources that occaisionally report on financial/economic topics. I was being very specific in my OP. Also, "somewhat random" reads like pure tin-foil hat nonsense to me. It sounds like: "If they agree with me, it is good; else they are a rubbish news source." I see this much too often on HN where someone claims the vast majority of major news sources cannot be trusted and only they know which news sources (and specific articles) can be trusted.
          • jjtheblunt 4mo ago
• dodu_ 4mo ago
  What if is, and always was, having people with no discernible skills or expertise being in charge of filling the hiring pipeline?
  • MagicMoonlight 4mo ago
    What? You mean 20 year olds who have never used a computer shouldn’t be in charge of hiring the CTO? That’s crazy. They’re far more qualified than the people with real jobs. They did an e-learning course!
• kittikitti 4mo ago
  I feel like there are some really good junior level jobs coming in the pipeline. But we have the flush out the capabilities of AI. The acceleration of AI progress is not increasing so once the roles get adjusted junior jobs will return.
• jdlyga 4mo ago
  The trouble with hiring juniors now is it's much more difficult to get them up to speed so they can be productive. Before covid, you'd sit next to them, get asked questions every so often, do some pair programming, and discuss ideas over lunch. You can, on paper, do the same exact things over Slack and Zoom. But there's much more friction. And a junior that's struggling is a lot less visible than it used to be. So what ends up happening is seniors become more heads down, getting things done, and juniors struggle to get time with more experienced coworkers.
  • mc3301 4mo ago
    Fully agree. I'm all for remote work. However, in my first 2 years of programming, being able to go the the office, put my laptop and notebook down next to a senior dev, point and say, "Help me," was so valuable.
    • wombatpm 4mo ago
      Screen share on slack or teams gives you the same. I’d routinely work with remote teammates that way, and we’d jump in a control each others machines as needed. We’d do hours of that as a team, breaking into breakout rooms as necessary. Much more effective that a hot conference room
      • jolmg 4mo ago
        Even simply taking pictures of one's monitor and sending them along with text/whatsapp messages can be surprisingly practical, low friction, and effective. Adds the benefit of being asynchronous collaboration.
        • doubled112 4mo ago
          But not logs or code. Please do not send me screenshots of logs or code.
          • jolmg 4mo ago
• abalashov 4mo ago
  In 2017, I wrote a blog post expressing some scepticism about the stampede toward remote work. This was well before the pandemic and before things hit a watershed with it. It occurred to me, then, that this would disrupt the pipeline for junior employees: https://web.archive.org/web/20200925070728/https://likewise.am/2017/05/19/in-response-to-the-cult-of-remote-working/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200925070728/https://likewise.... The point isn't to toot my horn, just to say that this seemed like an obvious problem with WFH even before the postpandemic cultural moment.
• moezd 4mo ago
  Anything to avoid Peter principle at all costs, I guess. I will spell it out: We have an aging middle manager problem in IT. Those with less desire to catch up on things have mandate and budget to pursue projects with sunken cost fallacies, they overestimate the cost of architectural change and they don't take criticism well. That's what's causing junior hiring to fail, because they don't want to hire juniors with passion, because especially with AI assisted tooling, these juniors suddenly seem a lot more capable than those aging guys who need their third meeting before lunch. Thus they hire the fresh graduate as an impressionable and yet unreliable junior instead.
• dinamic 4mo ago
  A lot of people I know have multiple remote jobs. I guess, when you have multiple jobs mentoring juniors is just an unnecessary chore which you want to avoid as much as you can, since it takes precious time from doing “real” work.
• epolanski 4mo ago
  Juniors remotely need a proper setup but can be definitely done. Juniors require pairing and mentorship if you really want them grow. I think that AI has put lots of pressure on everybody, juniors included, to deliver more, thus finding time for juniors is hard.
• agentifysh 4mo ago
  Surprised none of these comments address the issue from cultural/generational value gap I increasingly find across different borders that Gen Z simply are not optimal or desirable for hire and its not just "remote coding jobs" but across the spectrum. In South Korea, there are lot of of 35yo+ getting hired while people in their early 20s struggling. I see the same outcome in different advanced economies and the answer is quite simple, Gen Z, are simply not equipped to work or put up with grit that is needed. They are too self centered and contradictory to their own interests. They expect others to bend over backwards for them without any merit. Perhaps the biggest difference I see from millenials and gen z is that the degree in which they realize the difference between having earned the right to expressing your opinion and expressing your opinion. Unfortunately, from personal anecdotes and others, gen z simply are not aware and thus stuck in a loop. Frankly, I don't have any sympathy. I don't know where this entitlement comes from but its not helpig them and it certainly will not improve outcomes.
  • wvenable 4mo ago
    https://www.instagram.com/p/DOLfbRGjjcy/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DOLfbRGjjcy/
  • hbs18 4mo ago
    > Perhaps the biggest difference I see from millenials and gen z is that the degree in which they realize the difference between having earned the right to expressing your opinion and expressing your opinion. This reads like the classic case of "I had it bad therefore everybody else should too"
  • lll-o-lll 4mo ago
    > Perhaps the biggest difference I see from millenials and gen z is that the degree in which they realize the difference between having earned the right to expressing your opinion and expressing your opinion. This made me laugh so hard! I am gen x, and we used to say exactly the same thing about you spoiled, entitled, narcissistic, gritless millennials! You should have seen what it was like when I first started! You should have seen what I was like! You’ve got it all wrong! It’s not the generational differences that are the problem, it’s these darn young people are too darn young! (And some of them are a completely useless waste of space, as I was until life slapped a bit of sense into me). It’s a bit over the top, but I really love Musashi (novel) for this representation of the worthless youth who needs to be tied to a tree and suffering to the point of death before finally breaking and getting his crap together (become a human being; not just an animal). Feels like an (exaggerated) representation of the genuine journey all young men must make.
• contubernio 4mo ago
  Most comments are just older commenters confirming what everyone over 50 knows, which is that young people are slow and stupid and not as competent as we were back then nor as competent as we are now. Every generation ever has known this once it got old enough ...
• hdgvhicv 4mo ago
  In the U.K. youth unemployment was the same level as today back it 2007. Post GFC it shot up to over 20% Similar high levels in the black Wednesday crash and in the early 80s https://www.statista.com/statistics/813142/youth-unemployment-rate-in-the-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/813142/youth-unemploymen...
• khanmaria 4mo ago
  I'm all in for remote working. My first job out of college has been remote. As much as I would love for a senior to help me out when stuck, my org completely made it clear they needed juniors who could independently own products end to end without handholding. It's frowned upon to not have domain knowledge there, and in fact within month of joining I had to answer any questions related to the domain handed to me. This burnt me out. I wish organizations did not expect this much from juniors. My only aid has been burning myself out to learn fast and use AI to confirm my learnings, costing my mental and physical health. If my company was onsite, it would have been even worse to have the answers ready on spot.
  • Valodim 4mo ago
    Counter point: If it had been onsite, there would be a full layer of social sensibilities and grace from the colleagues you work with every day, helping you out. Conversely, it is much easier, on several levels, to support and guide someone you spend your whole day and go to lunch with.
  • harrouet 4mo ago
    This kind of company does not want "juniors who could independently own products end to end without handholding", they want do-it-all people on the cheap. They just don't know what it takes to do things the right way. It's not unusual that the organization is a mess as well, because management is unable to organize it. Get out of it, this kind of companies have a dysfunctional management. After the initial learning, they will be unable to recognize your value and contribution. Also, don't feel guilty about getting burnt out. It's not your fault and you got tougher.
    • lanyard-textile 4mo ago
      Super +1. Burnout is not failure.
  • lanyard-textile 4mo ago
    The role you've described is a senior one, not a junior one :) They're demanding you evolve beyond your capabilities without time, experience, or mentorship. Expecting domain knowledge at the junior level is weird. It's like being an expert at entry level. I know it doesn't help all that much to hear, but here's a sign so you at least know you're not crazy. That's not okay and that's not a healthy org.
• deleted 4mo ago
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• worldisworsenow 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• worldisworsenow 4mo ago
  > Paywall > AI hate bait > Antiunion rhetoric > Blind to tax recession You owe us a cat tax, OP. Your content is bad and you are deep in the compensation pocket.
• motbus3 4mo ago
  All companies I worked, big or small, local or remote. All of them stopped hirokg juniors long time ago. I have a guess that Juniors are much weaker today + AI + bad economy + (what I call) immediatism* I don't agree with remote work arguments because I saw that before with remote companies and totally works No company is investing for the next 10 years, not even 5 depending on the scale.
• arexxbifs 4mo ago
  What if there are several reasons all at once? * Economy is tighter overall. * Covid overhiring followed by firing means fresh graduates face competition from a large cohort of people with a few years of work experience. * Even if it's not necessarily true, if the C-suite _believes_ that AI can replace juniors, that's enough to funnel money away from hiring and into AI investments. When money for hiring is tight, seniors are prioritized. * Like it or not, workforce immigration (such as H-1B) causes displacement. * The number of CS graduates in the US has doubled over the last decade. In Sweden, fresh graduates across a number of fields are having a hard time finding jobs. Many of thosee seem to have either a STEM education affected by a dip in "green" capex/investments, or in "overhead" sectors likely to be tightened in bad times, such as HR specialists.
  • boshalfoshal 4mo ago
    Its AI. Both AI actually being good now, and CEOs believing AI is good. Even at most big tech companies, L3 engineers were basically the "claudes" of their team (or at least, 80% of their job was basically to be a "claude"). You give them some well scoped, largely coding task (that you either delegate as part of a larger project, or just something you don't want to do), and then they execute it. Once they build trust and learn the system, then they get larger projects, and then promotions. Places are still hiring juniors, but now the bar for them is just much much higher, because a large portion of the junior level work (i.e, execution on implementation details), is pretty much 80-90% done by some senior + AI at this point, whether people believe it or not. This was certainly the case at the FAANG I was at. I don't know why this "COVID overhiring" rhetoric is still a talking point. Covid was over 5 years ago at this point, those "overhires" have already left or have been flushed out from all these layoffs. Are you telling me the "COVID" overhiring resulted in such a huge surplus that, 5-6 years later, they are still on the market?
    • arexxbifs 4mo ago
      Meta fired 8,000 employees not two weeks ago: "[Meta] revealed to employees in April that it would conduct a major round of layoffs the following month while nixing plans to fill 6,000 open positions. The company told workers in a memo at the time that the job cuts were intended to help offset investments into other areas like AI." [1] That sounds exactly like funneling money away from hiring and into AI investments to me. As for COVID overhiring, Amazon doubled their workforce during the pandemic. I'm sure plenty of those hires are still employed. During their latest layoff, they also spoke about "shifting resources to invest more in artificial intelligence".[2] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/meta-layoffs-zuckerberg-says-success-isnt-a-given-in-memo.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/meta-layoffs-zuckerberg-says... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/21/amazon-cut-thousands-of-engineers-in-its-record-layoffs-filings-show.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/21/amazon-cut-thousands-of-engi...
• zenai666 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• AgentReinAi 4mo ago
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• tikhonj 4mo ago
  What if it's interest rates? I'm amazing at how anybody can discuss any questions about the tech job market without addressing the end of zero-interest rate policy. "It's interest rates, stupid" ought to be the first thing we consider, and stuff about AI/remote/etc only comes in when we have a specific reason to consider it.
  • aussieguy1234 4mo ago
    I guess we'll know for sure when they come down again
    • arrowsmith 4mo ago
      ZIRP will never happen again
      • gnulinux 4mo ago
        Will you or someone else be able to explain why not?
• TrackerFF 4mo ago
  Follow the money. ZIRP caused a massive overhiring in certain fields, especially in tech. The post-COVID hiring started to cool down around 2.5 years ago, and hit rock bottom 1 year ago. There were almost 4 times as many listings at the peak, 4 year ago, than there were 1 year ago. A quick data point: US Software job listings https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE US interest rates https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-rate So companies are flush with cash, and ride a bubble where there's a huge demand for digital tools. People that enrolled college during the height of the bubble were promised jobs left and right, and good salaries. People need to remember that these sort of things rarely change overnight - there can be a latency that takes months to years. At least to me, it seems like a classic example of a boom and bust. When I did my EE degree, everyone that specialized in control / automation were guaranteed a oil & gas job, many had a job offer 1 year before the graduated. The petro companies would wine and dine us, and we could send out competing offers to negotiate. Then came a huge crash, and almost no one had a job. The offers were rescinded, multi year hiring freeze. All in all very bad times. I'm not at all buying the argument that WFH has any serious effect on junior hiring.
• stevenwilkin 4mo ago
  https://archive.ph/7XytV https://archive.ph/7XytV
• maxehmookau 4mo ago
  Absolutely get in the bin with this ridiculous take from a newspaper with a vested interest in getting people back in to expensive office real estate. Juniors cost more to train, take more effort, and time from seniors who are otherwise "productive" and so companies don't want to hire them and be responsible for that additional work. It's not remote working, or AI that's to blame for weak junior hiring. It's short-termism from companies that see no reason to spend their time training up juniors.
• doubledamio 4mo ago
  There is no doubt that juniors have much more difficulty starting their careers in tech nowadays. This might be naive, but isn’t this purely a demographic/saturation effect?
• fipar 4mo ago
  You know that thing about the answer to any headline that’s a question being almost always “No”? I’ve been fully remote for 17 years and, before that, did short periods of remote work as early as 2003. The first junior I remember being onboarded remotely (into an irc-mostly, voice call for ultra rare cases job) was me and it worked pretty well. From about 2010 to 2012 I grew the support team of a database services company from 2 to about 20 people (the 2 at the start was counting me). A lot of the new hires were junior when it came too dabatases, some just junior period, and it worked great too. There were some in person meetings but the vast majority of onboarding and training happened remotely. Maybe people invested in office real estate are perhaps biased to get the wrong answer on this one. If I had time now, I’d write an article titled “is the FT right about the cause of weak junior hiring?” I don’t have time, but you can apply that saying about headlines to my imaginary article.
• xchip 4mo ago
  NVIDIA is hiring wherever the talent is, learn from NVIDIA, stop whining.
• xchip 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• merksittich 4mo ago
  My previous submission to the same article (without the syndication code, hence not recognized by the HN deduplication): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48319392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48319392 (2 comments)
• Aboutplants 4mo ago
  Most teams are run as skeleton crews and if I’m a hiring manager I’m ensuring I get senior, experienced employees regardless of where they work. If a company allows remote then my net for quality senior employees is massively increased.
• alfiedotwtf 4mo ago
  I remember when companies would hire fresh out of uni (sometimes not even uni just enthusiastic), without experience, and then build them up brick by brick, into a competent developer. Contrast this to needing to be in the top 5 leetcode just to pass the HR screener, and then throwing into the deep end just so they can PIP you in 3 months because they didn’t give you any time and resources to train you up. So now we have a gap, and the best fix we collectively came to was give senior developers AI so they didn’t need to hire fresh starts. Gee… I wonder why we have a problem :shrug:
• cjrp 4mo ago
  I wonder if it’d also related to the reduced length of time that people stay in a job now? Why invest in training a junior if they’ll move jobs as soon as they reach mid-level.
• goda90 4mo ago
  This is a pretty narrow anecdote but my employer prefers hiring right out of undergrad and training. They also were quite aggressive in ending remote work after Covid. I felt a lot better about the new developers I worked with before LLMs got big than I do now.
• hmokiguess 4mo ago
  Why does it have to be one thing? It's likely a whole lot of things that are contributing to this, including education and their parenting.
  • randusername 4mo ago
    IMO it's multi-faceted but all revolving around how broken hiring is for juniors. - HR is rarely equipped or incentivized to select true entry-level candidates without an obvious record of success in a similar prior role - Algorithmic job boards are brutal and they make juniors anxious or under pressure to have all the answers if they are seen at all - Seniors that in the past would take hiring risks because they saw something of their own children in a junior candidate are, in 2026, a lot more likely to still have young children they want to WFH focus on - College is very expensive now and CS programs can be selective. I continually see a disconnect where seniors interview for the curiosity and passion that served them well in their career but the candidate's parents told them to do CS for the ROI. Fair I guess, but these are different people to manage.
• notarobot123 4mo ago
  Why not both?
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
• __alexander 4mo ago
  Brace yourself, hybrid and return to office propaganda are coming.
• akohstic 4mo ago
  [dead]
• travelalberta 4mo ago
  I blame the pervasive messaging of "learn to code" and those "day in the life of a software engineer" videos. The number of CS graduates is like double what it was a few years ago. As we transition into a 'bust' cycle for tech with lots of layoffs suddenly you have a tricky situation where mid to senior engineers are looking for any kind of work they can get, while at the same time there is an ocean of junior talent looking to get their foot in the door.
• Gastonison 4mo ago
  the issue is pay bands, not remote work or ai. Why would you hire a junior instead of a senior, if the senior costs only 20% more?
  • vanviegen 4mo ago
    Where are you seeing such a narrow pay band? I don't have a great view on the market, but that strikes me as really odd.
• deleted 4mo ago
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• spjt 4mo ago
  Why would remote working have anything to do with the amount of junior hiring? You can maybe make the case that remote work isn't as helpful for juniors etc etc. but that has absolutely nothing to do with the decision to create a job requisition or not.
  • ghaff 4mo ago
    I would think the general situation would be that it's probably harder to develop juniors now in a (more) remote environment so we shouldn't hire them and hire more experienced people instead.
  • closetohome 4mo ago
    I would guess it's a talent pool thing. If you're hiring in-office you're limited to locals and candidates willing to relocate. If you're hiring remotely, the pool is much larger not only in terms of size, but in range of compensation. For example you might be able to get a mid-level engineer living in the midwest for the cost of a junior in a major city.
• jollyllama 4mo ago
  A lot of disagreements ITT, but a lack of counterexamples. If this theory were false, we'd expect to see: * places with strong in-office presence where juniors are not being hired * remote teams with strong hiring of juniors
• sharadov 4mo ago
  As someone who worked remote for 8 years I can see a few reasons - Really hard to get juniors up to speed when they are remote, when I started out as a junior I sat around a bunch of senior folks, and inhaled in all the knowledge via the interactions we had all day. - In my previous company, we hired a bunch of juniors who clearly were not self-motivated. There were few who were actively disengaged, would not even care to turn the camera on. They were a few boot-camp grads who though motivated, I could not for the life of me teach computer fundamentals. You can't learn a 4 yr degree's worth of stuff in 6 months at a bootcamp. Yes Covid was great for us senior folks who did not need direction and were disciplined, but really bad for junior folk.
• jazz9k 4mo ago
  Remote work takes the same discipline as running your own company. I've been working remotely for 20 years now, and most people just can't handle it and are either distracted, slacking off, or just not working. I've seen lots of people fired over it, and ruined it for everyone. I'm a consultant now and no longer have to hope and dream that my employer will let me work remotely. It's in my contract.
• cauliflower99 4mo ago
  Folks who are new in any role in any industry really need to understand that remote work is a huge disadvantage when you know nothing or nearly nothing. Anecdotally, I've run an apprenticeship program for a few years now in software. We hire 5 apprentices at a time - usually people who have done some online courses in programming and want to get into the industry. They would be pre-junior. The year we went fully remote for lockdowns, the failure rate of the apprenticeship went from 0% to 80%. We went to a hybrid policy of "you choose how many days you want in the office" - failure rate dropped to 40% with the top of the group being the 2 people who were in the office everyday. Today, it is a mandated 4 days a week in the office - failure rate is at 0% again. Not only does nobody fail, but the folks who consistently turn up to the office and get involved talking to seniors are inevitably the ones who progress the fastest. The ones fighting to work from home because it's inconvenient consistently do worse. All those opportunities to improve by 1% via a meaningful conversation or a whiteboard diagram disappear when working from home. The 1%'s matter the most when you're a junior.
• wnc3141 4mo ago
  The only thing that doesn't make sense: these companies are more profitable than ever. Google stock rocketed up last year. AI spend per employee is also up, many companies with a strictly enforced minimum AI spend. Surely that cost could have gone to entry levels?