Junior Developers in the Age of AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Junior Developers in the Age of AI

#21

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:21 PM UTC

mlsu wrote: post #7

That chart shown in the article is very interesting. But I think more important things happened in 2023 than just GPT3.5. ZIRP ending, coding becoming a full blown meme ("day in the life of a wfh swe" videos on tiktok), and work from home exploding. This combination of factors made it risky to make a mistake hiring an unqualified SWE. SWE salaries exploded AND money got more expensive. At the same time, the number of…

Software development compensation in the US id very much bi modal.

Most developers in the US work at banks, insurance companies, etc - “the enterprise” - in tier 2 cities. Those developers usually max out at around $160K-$175K or less and it hasn’t kept up with inflation. I did all of my “enterprise dev” up until 2020 in Atlanta. You can look at the compensation of well known Atlanta companies like Delta, Coke and Home Depot. You will see the same pattern in most other cities in the US outside of the west coast and NYC

Enterprise devs if they remain so will probably never crack $200K inflation adjusted. I don’t know any of my friends/former coworkers who are still software developers in their 40s who still live and work in Atlanta who are making over $160K. They are doing well enough though being married with two incomes.

The problem on that end is that it is easy enough to be a good enough generic CRUD LOB developer, it started being commoditized around 2015 and comp stagnated on the high end.

FWIW, I pivoted to cloud consulting specializing in app dev when a (full time with the standard 4 year comp structure) when a remote position at AWS ProServe fell into my lap (still work in consulting - not at AWS). We moved to state tax free Florida in 2022

On another note, it still doesn’t make sense to hire juniors. The difference in comp for a junior dev and senior dev on the enterprise /small SaaS startup side is at most 60K if you stay out of SFBay or NYC and set up shop in a second tier city. You probably won’t need the route. Look at the laughable comp being offered by most early YC startups. No statistically worthless illiquid equity in a private company is not what I consider “compensation”

Re: Junior Developers in the Age of AI

#22

Post by cadamsdotcom » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 7:34 PM UTC

There’s less backfilling given parts of the junior work can be automated - not a whole job mind you, just some of the roles. The others can spread among the team.

We are in a transition phase and the standards to be employed are going up.

The best new grads and juniors will come to see AI as a “code generating machine” and “answer machine” and upskill themselves then come in at what we currently call mid level.

Re: Junior Developers in the Age of AI

#23

Post by theappsecguy » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #16

thr0waway001 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even before AI have noticed really small to mid size companies not having enough budget to hire junior developers that they know they'd have to train from the ground up. They'd rather take chances on senior developers and/or contractors.

I think there's a misconception that junior devs require all that much training compared to an experienced engineer. I rarely have all that many relevant skills when starting a new job. I have to learn their processes/tools/etc from reading the docs. So I'm probably coming in at like 20% better than junior. Junior devs will have an easier time finding jobs in positions that operate in niche industries, because they o…

If you’re only coming in at 20% above a complete junior you’re a slightly experienced junior elsewhere. You’re telling me your experience dealing with SDLC, incidents, abstractions, ubiquitous technologies like databases, CI/CD, k8s, etc only put you 20% ahead? Thats an absurd undersell.