AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
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AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
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Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#2Author here. My last post on this reached the front page, and the main objection was that after AI, the junior's marginal value is gone: if a junior just passes specs to an AI tool and PRs back, why pay the salary?
That deserved a real answer, so I wrote this post. Short version: that describes a problem with how the role is structured, not what juniors can do. Push back welcome.
Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#3I think it is less about junior/mid engineers, and more just about the kinds of work inexperienced/cheap developers are often doing: assembly line, JIRA-ticket-taker type development.
This is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [0] since these are often the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing. The new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H1B visa has made it difficult to justify hiring foreign tech workers when most of the time they are just going to be using American LLMs to do their work anyway.
[0] https://thefederal.com/category/news/h1b-visa-indian-tech-wo...
Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#4Author here. My last post on this reached the front page, and the main objection was that after AI, the junior's marginal value is gone: if a junior just passes specs to an AI tool and PRs back, why pay the salary? That deserved a real answer, so I wrote this post. Short version: that describes a problem with how the role is structured, not what juniors can do. Push back welcome.
If an intern can do the work of a technical lead, architect, software designer, or project manager, why do we need such expensive resources? Just fire all the seniors (including the CxOs) and let the interns run the company as lowest-paid temporary contractors, with the help of AI. /s
Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#5I think it is less about junior/mid engineers, and more just about the kinds of work inexperienced/cheap developers are often doing: assembly line, JIRA-ticket-taker type development. This is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [0] since these are often the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing. The new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H1B visa has made it difficult…
Good riddance. Worked with many offshored firms before, from all over the world. The work was subpar before and it’s even worse now.
Now I can fire off agents ona remote box to do the grunt work and open PRs, then just prompt to review/iterate it. No timezone timezone delays or language barriers. Nearly instant feedback.
Coding is solved. Engineering is not. Catch up or be left behind.
Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#6I think it is less about junior/mid engineers, and more just about the kinds of work inexperienced/cheap developers are often doing: assembly line, JIRA-ticket-taker type development. This is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [0] since these are often the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing. The new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H1B visa has made it difficult…
Good riddance. Worked with many offshored firms before, from all over the world. The work was subpar before and it’s even worse now. Now I can fire off agents ona remote box to do the grunt work and open PRs, then just prompt to review/iterate it. No timezone timezone delays or language barriers. Nearly instant feedback. Coding is solved. Engineering is not. Catch up or be left behind.
> Good riddance.
> Coding is solved. Engineering is not. Catch up or be left behind.
I'm really grateful for my company's culture. Reading replies like this, I remember how easy it is to forget how atrocious that can be elsewhere. Thanks for the perspective and reminder.
Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#7I think it is less about junior/mid engineers, and more just about the kinds of work inexperienced/cheap developers are often doing: assembly line, JIRA-ticket-taker type development. This is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [0] since these are often the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing. The new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H1B visa has made it difficult…
Good riddance. Worked with many offshored firms before, from all over the world. The work was subpar before and it’s even worse now. Now I can fire off agents ona remote box to do the grunt work and open PRs, then just prompt to review/iterate it. No timezone timezone delays or language barriers. Nearly instant feedback. Coding is solved. Engineering is not. Catch up or be left behind.
Your boss isn't shortly going to say the same about you? Fable is better than you at engineering.
Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#8> The junior engineer executes it, which nowadays means prompting it to an AI tool, and creating a pull request (PR).
The PR receives feedback from more senior engineers. The junior engineer gets the feedback and takes it to the AI tool again, proposing changes.
Yeah this part should not exist anymore. It doesn’t where I work.
When I get a PR I just ask an agent to make the proposed changes. There is absolutely zero incentive for me to give feedback for you to give to an agent when I can give it to an agent myself.
Coding isn’t the job anymore. It’s understanding systems and architecture design, and ownership of what you work on. Being able to design solutions, understand them, deliver them and support them in production is the job now. Engineering is still engineering. End to end ownership is the job.
Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#9> If the assumption is that AI is going to radically simplify the technical portion of the role, then the people who have started their careers with AI will be in the best spot once they have acquired the experience.
This doesn't make sense - AI is to allow unskilled people to produce what was previously only produced by skilled people.
IOW, how does having 2 years of experience using an LLM to generate code beat having 2 months of experience?
The whole point of using the LLM is that very little skill is involved; how does starting earlier with it provide an advantage? If it's as good as it is claimed to be, starting later with it won't make a single iota of difference to the generated results, compared to someone who started earlier.
Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good riddance. Worked with many offshored firms before, from all over the world. The work was subpar before and it’s even worse now. Now I can fire off agents ona remote box to do the grunt work and open PRs, then just prompt to review/iterate it. No timezone timezone delays or language barriers. Nearly instant feedback. Coding is solved. Engineering is not. Catch up or be left behind.
> Good riddance. > Coding is solved. Engineering is not. Catch up or be left behind. I'm really grateful for my company's culture. Reading replies like this, I remember how easy it is to forget how atrocious that can be elsewhere. Thanks for the perspective and reminder.
how do you mean? surely you're paid for delivering product not coding? if it is the latter, I too would love to be paid for recreational coding