The AI Era and Junior Developers: Progress Over Hype

As we’re seeing more and more progress in LLMs and dozens of AI agents, we often see posts about “junior developers becoming obsolete” or how nobody will hire junior engineers. Before we dive into the rest of this discussion, I want to clarify that AI (and the “intelligence” aspect of it being debatable) is gaining tremendous momentum and is becoming an essential part of our lives. Personally, I’m a big advocate of it being a great achievement for humanity and a must-have tool for any industry nowadays.

Current State and “Vibe Coding”

Let’s get one thing clear: AI, in all its hype and glory, is a powerful tool we have at our disposal nowadays. Let’s not confuse good engineering with vibe coding.

Vibe coding is nothing new. We’ve had the problem of non-engineers pretending to be engineers for a long time. Remember that candidate who finished a bootcamp six months ago and was already claiming to know everything while searching for a senior position?

AI enables non-engineers to pretend a bit more to be engineers, and deliver what they call “software solutions.” But it also enables good engineers to deliver faster than ever, removing the language barrier more than ever before.

Good senior engineers know how to design sustainable solutions, yet recognize when “good enough” is, well, really good enough — and that the solution doesn’t need to be the best in the world (being pragmatic).

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

AI is a powerful tool. As with anything powerful, if it lands in the wrong hands, it can cause huge damage. But in the correct set of hands, it can bring many good things.

Good decisions are made based on experience. Experience comes from making both good and bad decisions.

How can we have senior engineers if we don’t have juniors who need to make mistakes in order to grow and learn?

Cost-Benefit of Junior Engineers

Does AI today replace junior capabilities? Well, frankly, most of the time it does. Does that mean everyone will stop hiring them? I doubt it. The industry would be shooting itself in the foot with such a bold move. Though a fair question is: “Why does my company have to pay for juniors to learn? Why not let another company spend their money?”

This portrays juniors as a pure cost. And if we compare a senior engineer with a good AI agent, more likely than not, the cost of a junior engineer is higher than the cost of a senior engineer + AI tooling license.

But what if we broaden the picture a bit? Why are we narrowing down the scope of the question to a simple comparison between a human and an LLM? What if we stop doing that rather unfair comparison and instead focus on a new breed of juniors—ones that use AI to help them?

The Hybrid Model: Juniors + AI

With the premise that juniors will usually come with rather poor solutions, throwing AI at them will just increase the number of poor solutions, right? It would definitely seem so.

But what if a junior nowadays can make 10x more mistakes than we (pre-AI-era engineers) could? Wouldn’t this be an amazing opportunity to learn 10x more in the same period it took us? And instead of thinking about juniors as cost generators who senior engineers need to spend time teaching, what if we shift the paradigm? Instead of the senior engineer being the first go-to person for help, what if the LLM can be that magical helping hand? Wouldn’t this result in juniors being able to be much more self-sustained than we could ever have dreamed of 10 years ago?

Will some juniors not use the opportunity given to them in this new era? Of course! But this is nothing new. Prior to AI, we all saw a fair share of juniors who simply didn’t share the passion or willingness to put in the effort to grow into great engineers one day. Nothing changes there.

What does change is the sheer amount of opportunities they have today. It’s a blessing to be able to make 10 times more mistakes than we ever could. It’s a blessing to have a helping hand at your disposal 24/7. Whether they use the opportunity or not is a rather personal matter for every engineer to decide for themselves: how much do they really want to pursue this line of work?

Managing Expectations

No, juniors are not going away. What is changing is the expectations towards them. They will need to demonstrate they can use AI effectively. The “effective usage” will differ between seniors and juniors, but each role is seeing a shift in expectations. Some will meet them, some will outperform them, and some will fail to meet them. And that’s what we’ve had for decades—not only in the software engineering industry, but in every industry.

Those who can adapt progress. Those who can’t, cease to exist. Be it a company, a human, or a profession. Every decade brings its own disruption. It’s called progress.