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AI has torched the market for junior programmers

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Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#91

Post by sdevonoes »

sixtyj wrote: post #72
awepofiwaop wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're clearly in it just for the money That's often how jobs work. I happen to like my job, but let's not pretend like everyone is going to make sufficient money following their most passionate interests.

If people are unable to find joy in their paid work even after some time, they should consider doing something else. For sure, sufficient money is important part of this equation. But I strongly believe that if you find (your sort of) fun in what you do then you become faster and more efficient at it. Edit: Cleaning, nursing etc. Yes there are professions that almost no one wants to do. But that doesn’t mean that the…

Wheres the joy in cleaning public toilets? Should all of those workers leave?

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#92

Post by pixel_popping »

Chance-Device wrote: post #79

We don’t need to rebuild the ladder, and we don’t need juniors. By the time the seniors leave the job market, the software engineer profession as we know it simply won’t exist. I very much doubt that there will be the higher level architect position either. If Fable 5 is anything to go by, we’re all replaceable within 12 to 24 months. The rest is social inertia.

Fable 5 will be genuinely weak compared to what's coming, I mean, we need to remember this is kinda the beginning still, we will genuinely reach a point where all benchmarks will score 99.9%. Think Opus 10, GPT-10... :)

Also Fable 5 isn't "that impressive" as a lot of people have that kind of intelligence since 6 months+ by using combo of models and loops (I scored better on HLE than gpt-5.5 xhigh last January with some good tooling and 6x the cost), but for a lambda Claude Code user, I can see why it looks that good.

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#93

Post by coderatlarge »

jemmyw wrote: post #83
Fraterkes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I’m at the start of my career but do have a genuine burning interest in programming. Am I fucked or not?

If you're in that 20% that actually has an interest in the work then you'll probably be fine.

actually my feeling on this is that pretty soon unless you’re in the top 1% of performers for a software task it will become difficult to hold a role at a frontier company.

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#94

Post by Chance-Device »

pixel_popping wrote: post #92
Chance-Device wrote: post #79

We don’t need to rebuild the ladder, and we don’t need juniors. By the time the seniors leave the job market, the software engineer profession as we know it simply won’t exist. I very much doubt that there will be the higher level architect position either. If Fable 5 is anything to go by, we’re all replaceable within 12 to 24 months. The rest is social inertia.

Fable 5 will be genuinely weak compared to what's coming, I mean, we need to remember this is kinda the beginning still, we will genuinely reach a point where all benchmarks will score 99.9%. Think Opus 10, GPT-10... :) Also Fable 5 isn't "that impressive" as a lot of people have that kind of intelligence since 6 months+ by using combo of models and loops (I scored better on HLE than gpt-5.5 xhigh last January with s…

Are you using it or are you just going off benchmarks?

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#95

Post by throwaway4233 »

deadbabe wrote: post #2

Anecdotally we haven’t hired junior engineers in over a year and do not plan to.

Wouldn't you be losing out on the fresh ideas and perspectives new entrants into this field brings ? I had read "Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley" a few months ago and most of the disruptions in the industry came from engineers who brought in fresh perspective or had the energy to try something different.

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#96

Post by BoxFour »

j45 wrote: post #68
marginalia_nu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair junior developers almost universally kinda suck and you have to teach them the job. They'll take 10x the time to do a job a senior would, and do it in a way that is much more complicated than it needs to be. The reason you bother with them is and has always been to create future senior engineers that understand your business well enough to ensure business continuity.

Universities haven't kept up with the pace of change in software development in 1-3 years. Too many if not most can't even change a single sentence in their curriculum in 1-2 years. It doesn't mean University isn't worth it, it's worth less if you aren't self-directed learner building things.

Universities never kept up with current practices and to be honest I don’t really think it’s their job to.

Universities aren’t vocational schools. An undergraduate education can, at best, teach you how to learn complex topics independently and give you foundational knowledge you can build upon later whether you’re going into industry, pursuing a PhD, or doing something unrelated.

The place for you to learn “practical” software development is an internship or an entry-level role, assisted with a lot of self-directed learning that hopefully university made possible for you.

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#97

Post by dataplumb3r »

j45 wrote: post #68
marginalia_nu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair junior developers almost universally kinda suck and you have to teach them the job. They'll take 10x the time to do a job a senior would, and do it in a way that is much more complicated than it needs to be. The reason you bother with them is and has always been to create future senior engineers that understand your business well enough to ensure business continuity.

Universities haven't kept up with the pace of change in software development in 1-3 years. Too many if not most can't even change a single sentence in their curriculum in 1-2 years. It doesn't mean University isn't worth it, it's worth less if you aren't self-directed learner building things.

[dead]

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#98

Post by matheusmoreira »

echelon wrote: post #23
onraglanroad wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Stop the moral grandstanding. This is a legitimate observation. We're also not hiring juniors. Only seniors who can use LLMs and evaluate the outputs.

> Only seniors who can use LLMs and evaluate the outputs.

I'm just a hobbyist but I've gotten pretty good at using LLMs and evaluating and refining their outputs. Think there's still space in this industry or is it hopeless?

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#99

Post by marginalia_nu »

j45 wrote: post #68
marginalia_nu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair junior developers almost universally kinda suck and you have to teach them the job. They'll take 10x the time to do a job a senior would, and do it in a way that is much more complicated than it needs to be. The reason you bother with them is and has always been to create future senior engineers that understand your business well enough to ensure business continuity.

Universities haven't kept up with the pace of change in software development in 1-3 years. Too many if not most can't even change a single sentence in their curriculum in 1-2 years. It doesn't mean University isn't worth it, it's worth less if you aren't self-directed learner building things.

Problem is that programming is as much practice as it is theory. You need years practical programming experience to be good at programming, and universities are really not set up to provide that.

One might argue that it might not be a bad idea to have apprenticeships like they do in traditional trade crafts. I'd argue that this is what the junior programmer role is.

Re: AI has torched the market for junior programmers

#100

Post by BoxFour »

bee_rider wrote: post #90
j45 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities haven't kept up with the pace of change in software development in 1-3 years. Too many if not most can't even change a single sentence in their curriculum in 1-2 years. It doesn't mean University isn't worth it, it's worth less if you aren't self-directed learner building things.

This is the well known weird thing about programming, right? University students learn CS, happen to also pick up some programming trade skills as a side effect, and then get hired as software craftspeople. The coincidentally learned skills are never quite up to date, just close enough. But nobody wants to set up programming trade schools or apprenticeships so shrug.

Programming trade schools were (are they still?) quite popular for a long time - see lambda school et al.

They weren’t a panacea either.

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