Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

franciscotrindade.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 117 posts

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#61

Post by dudul »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #46

Wouldn't the logic to only hire Junior engineers if AI could do the work, what do you need the Senior salary for if they're both just asking AI to do things. This is obviously assuming the ideology of an organization that would consider something like "We shouldn't be hiring engineers anymore" in the first place so they obviously have absolute trust in AI.

For now that won't work, based on my experience with LLMs, you still need a very senior engineer to prompt and review what was produced by the agent. A junior wouldn't have the experience to identify the flaws/issues.

In the future, yeah maybe, when LLMs are not as dumb as they are today.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#62

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

sumanthvepa wrote: post #50
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's lived experience. My management is a lot happier when I move too fast to really pay attention to the problems and use my expertise, and the output is good enough that nobody really complains. Building most software is no longer skilled work; it takes minimal training. The industry just hasn't caught up yet.

Well. I own my business and I really hate this attitude that some startups executives have. I want quality. Not blind speed. I want speed to be a by product of a well built product and a system that builds it. Not a bunch of slop thrown over the wall that I have to then debug and fix.

The AI is pretty good at debugging and fixing it. It's quite a bit better at it than writing the code, to be honest.

And, you're right, I used to enjoy my job a lot more before AI. But in the end, the paychecks keep coming, and I can produce a lot of acceptable code quickly with little skill. Skill in coding no longer makes economic sense.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#63

Post by dudul »

guywithahat wrote: post #25

There’s an irony too, in that junior engineers are more likely to understand and use AI tools, and quickly become more performant than their senior engineers asking questions on stack overflow. It’s what’s happening at my company and it feels silly since certain projects are way behind and constantly hiring because the very senior lead refuses to use AI

"junior engineers are more likely to understand and use AI tools, and quickly become more performant than their senior engineers asking questions on stack overflow"

Anything to back up this claim? SO is dead, senior engineers don't use it. Why are junior more likely to understand and use AI tools than senior? I would counter with "senior are more likely to properly use and keep AI in check than junior".

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#64

Post by randusername »

This is a great example of a blog post that isn't obviously AI written, but that also doesn't make much sense.

> Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

No payoff, what is the problem they think they have and why is it wrong?

> The junior engineer question rests on a few assumptions, and all of them are flawed.

No payoff, what are the assumptions and why are they flawed?

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#65

Post by d0100 »

lbriner wrote: post #14

I'm not sure I understand the logic that we wouldn't hire Juniors because now we have AI. What jobs are Juniors doing that AI can now do? I don't get juniors to build me entire web sites or implement complicated agentic pieces of work. Most of the time, we hire Juniors to help fill the talent pool with the hope that they will be productive in a few months. If we think that we don't need to refill the pool now because…

> we hire Juniors to help fill the talent pool with the hope that they will be productive in a few months

The sad reality for smaller companies is that we cannot compete salary-wise, which means training juniors that will leave the minute they become productive

But mostly the issue is with the market, there are only so many things you need a junior to do in a body shop that is getting squeezed

Other companies are also cash constrained and need to pivot fast to "AI"-something, which juniors wont really help with on the short-term

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#66

Post by cataphract »

win311fwg wrote: post #51
threatofrain wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seniors don’t use SO anymore, it virtually died if you look at traffic. The reason the market is so tough for juniors isn’t because seniors are bad at chat or agent workflows, it’s quite the opposite of what you say.

> Seniors don’t use SO anymore Did they ever? SO wasn't around during my junior days so I never got to experience it from that angle, but it looked like it would have been an incredible resource for those who juniored in its heyday. However, I never found it to be successful in delivering to the problems I encountered as a senior.

Right, SO was always better at answering beginner questions then advanced ones, except if the complex question had a broad appeal. Part of it is because the format is not good for asking a context-heavy question. Another part because you were dependent on the pool of people answering, and the more niched the question was (using a library not very popular, for instance) or the more expertise it required, the less likely you were to find someone.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#67

Post by Neywiny »

d0100 wrote: post #65
lbriner wrote: post #14

I'm not sure I understand the logic that we wouldn't hire Juniors because now we have AI. What jobs are Juniors doing that AI can now do? I don't get juniors to build me entire web sites or implement complicated agentic pieces of work. Most of the time, we hire Juniors to help fill the talent pool with the hope that they will be productive in a few months. If we think that we don't need to refill the pool now because…

> we hire Juniors to help fill the talent pool with the hope that they will be productive in a few months The sad reality for smaller companies is that we cannot compete salary-wise, which means training juniors that will leave the minute they become productive But mostly the issue is with the market, there are only so many things you need a junior to do in a body shop that is getting squeezed Other companies are als…

Depends on the field I guess. Some smaller companies I've seen have dramatically lower leadership costs, so ICs get more of the share of the gross revenue. Even with perhaps a discount to clients for choosing a small business, they can still come out on top

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#68

Post by eitally »

d0100 wrote: post #65
lbriner wrote: post #14

I'm not sure I understand the logic that we wouldn't hire Juniors because now we have AI. What jobs are Juniors doing that AI can now do? I don't get juniors to build me entire web sites or implement complicated agentic pieces of work. Most of the time, we hire Juniors to help fill the talent pool with the hope that they will be productive in a few months. If we think that we don't need to refill the pool now because…

> we hire Juniors to help fill the talent pool with the hope that they will be productive in a few months The sad reality for smaller companies is that we cannot compete salary-wise, which means training juniors that will leave the minute they become productive But mostly the issue is with the market, there are only so many things you need a junior to do in a body shop that is getting squeezed Other companies are als…

FWIW, your pessimism isn't entirely well-founded. If you're in a hot, tech-centric market, then yes, staff will be far more inclined to job hop for comp increases. But if you're hiring remote or you're located outside one of the very few tech hubs, employees value quality of life and workplace culture/relationships much more highly relative to comp. E.g. If you're hiring a SWE in Nashville or Portland or Columbus they're going to behave differently than if you're hiring in the Bay Area, Seattle area, NYC, Boston or Austin.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#69

Post by nozzlegear »

daun_gee wrote: post #24
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we're worried about contributing to a hostile environment for people who have nothing to do with this complaint. To illustrate: replace the slur with a racial or sexist one, and see how it reads. If you want to insult people, take the time to come up with a relevant insult: don't just fire your gun into the air.

I didn't say anything racist or sexist. I'm mocking stupid people who are sucking up all the air in the room. Fuck these AI retards.

There's no need to use slurs.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#70

Post by collinmcnulty »

mikeocool wrote: post #47

Pre-AI juniors were valuable because on many tasks, it was faster for me (senior eng) to write a quick spec have a conversation with a junior, and have them go off for a few hours or a few days and write the code, and then come back with it for review. I could do that with several junior engineers and pretty reasonably paralellize the work. Now a junior takes my spec, drops it into Claude, and submits a PR a few minu…

Do you think that its possible to raise the bar for junior engineers such that "you have AI now, so I need you to own farther up the review chain yourself"? I feel like I could answer either way. No, you need reps on projects to have that kind of judgement, that's what makes a senior. But also yes, while it will take the junior way longer to do that kind of review, they have the time to do it now, and its now the bottleneck so it makes sense to put their effort into that portion.
Post reply on HN