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AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

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Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#301

Post by tester756 »

lifeformed wrote: post #225
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1965: learning how to punch your own punch cards is part of the learning process 1995: struggling with docs and learning how and where to find the answers part of the learning process 2005: struggling with stackoverflow and learning how to find answers to questions that others have asked before quickly is part of the learning process 2015: using search to find answers is part of the learning process 2025: using AI to…

Has the quality of software been improving all this time?

Sure, people were writing terrible code 25 years ago

XML oriented programming and other stuff was "invented" back then

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#302

Post by simsla »

rsanek wrote: post #226
alexgotoi wrote: post #192

The thing people miss in these “replace juniors with AI” takes is that juniors were never mainly about cheap hands on keyboards. They’re the only people in the org who are still allowed to ask “dumb” questions without losing face, and those questions are often the only signal you get that your abstractions are nonsense. What AI does is remove a bunch of the humiliating, boring parts of being junior: hunting for the r…

"without losing face"? What culture are you referring to? The Western companies I have worked at do not discourage such questions -- in fact, it's often the sign of someone very senior when they ask a seemingly 'dumb' question that others have taken for granted.

I don't think that's the same. I spitball crazy ideas, but my core knowledge/expertise is sound, and I try not to talk out of my ass. (Or I am upfront when I'm outside my area of expertise. I think it's important to call that out once your word starts carrying some weight.)

A product manager can definitely say things that would make me lose a bit of respect for a fellow senior engineer.

I can also see how juniors have more leeway to weigh in on things they absolutely don't understand. Crazy ideas and constructive criticism is welcome from all corners, but at some level I also start expecting some more basic competence.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#303

Post by marcosdumay »

jorvi wrote: post #257
ebiester wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I think there are two models. One is a "one junior per team" model. I endorse this for exactly the reasons you speak. Another, as I recently saw, was a 70/30 model of juniors to seniors. You make your seniors as task delegators and put all implementation on the junior developers. This puts an "up or out" pressure and gives very little mentorship opportunities. if 70% of your engineers are under 4 years of experie…

That second model is basically the hospital model. You have 1 veteran doctor overseeing 4 learning doctors. For example operating rooms do this, where they will have 4 operating rooms with 4 less experienced anesthesist and then 1 very experienced anesthesist who will rotate between the 4 and is on call for when shit hits the fan. Honestly I think everyone here is missing the forest for the trees. Juniors their main…

I guess Peopleware couldn't get every single thing right.

A hospital model may be a good idea. One where you have a senior programmer and many junior ones doing most tasks isn't. IMO, something closer to a real hospital team, where you have experts of different disciplines, and maybe a couple of juniors composing the team has much higher chances of success.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#304

Post by atomicnumber3 »

lokar wrote: post #64
simonw wrote: post #7

Relevant post by Kent Beck from 12th Dec 2025: The Bet On Juniors Just Got Better https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/the-bet-on-juniors-just-got... > The juniors working this way compress their ramp dramatically. Tasks that used to take days take hours. Not because the AI does the work, but because the AI collapses the search space. Instead of spending three hours figuring out which API to use, they spend twenty minute…

For an experienced engineer, working out the syntax, APIs, type issues, understanding errors, etc is the easy part of the job. Larger picture issues are the real task. But for many Jr engineers it’s the hard part. They are not (yet) expected to be responsible for the larger issues.

This is honestly what I (staff engineer) find AI the most useful for. I've been around the block enough that I typically know in general what I want, but I often find myself wanting it in a new framework or paradigm or similar, and if I could just ASK a person a question, they'd understand it. But not knowing the exact right keywords, especially in frameworks with lots of jargon, can still make it annoying. I can often get what I want by just sitting down and reading approximately 6 screen-heights of text out of the official docs on the general topic in question to find the random sentence 70% of the way down that answered my question.

But dyou know what's really great at taking a bunch of tokens and then giving me a bunch of probabilistically adjacent tokens? Yeah exactly! So often even if the AI is giving me something totally bonkers semantically, just knowing all those tokens are adjacent enough gives me a big leg up in knowing how to phrase my next question, and of course sometimes the AI is also accidentally semantically correct too.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#305

Post by reactordev »

Xelbair wrote: post #263
reactordev wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company culture. Some companies I worked for would fire you for questioning decisions. Others, welcomed criticism. You don’t really know which environment you’re in until someone says something. Are you going to take the risk and be the first?

Yes, because i would rather not work at such company and go somewhere else.

In this market you might not have a choice but to stick it out a while

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#306

Post by marcosdumay »

frtime2025 wrote: post #250
alexgotoi wrote: post #192

The thing people miss in these “replace juniors with AI” takes is that juniors were never mainly about cheap hands on keyboards. They’re the only people in the org who are still allowed to ask “dumb” questions without losing face, and those questions are often the only signal you get that your abstractions are nonsense. What AI does is remove a bunch of the humiliating, boring parts of being junior: hunting for the r…

AI will replace jobs. People are putting their IT/dev budget into something, which means something else will be cut. I also don’t believe juniors, kids, seniors, staff, principals, distinguished/fellow should be replaced by AI. I think they WILL be, but they shouldn’t be. AI at Gemini 3 Flash / Claude Opus 4.5 level is capable with help and review of doing a lot of what a lot of devs do currently. It can’t do everyth…

> People are putting their IT/dev budget into something, which means something else will be cut.

That's not how things work in normal times.

But normal times require minimally capable managers, a somewhat competitive economy, and some meritocracy in hiring. I can believe that's how things will work this time, but it's still a stupid way to do it.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#307

Post by switchbak »

bgwalter wrote: post #294
psunavy03 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't the question being asked. The question being asked was literally "what are this guy's accomplishments," and Kent Beck is a tech industry OG with a laundry list of them. Of course he can be wrong; he's human. That wasn't my point.

No, that wasn't the question.

When you're so out of touch as to not know who Kent Beck is, these questions hardly matter.

The thrust of the issue is that: when used suitably, AI tools can increase the rate of learning such that it changes the economics of investments in juniour developers - in a good way, to the contrary of how these tools have been discussed in the mainstream. That is an interesting take, and worthy of discussion.

Your appeal to authority here is out of place here and clearly uninformed, thus the downvotes.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#308

Post by marcosdumay »

beAbU wrote: post #128
simonw wrote: post #7

Relevant post by Kent Beck from 12th Dec 2025: The Bet On Juniors Just Got Better https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/the-bet-on-juniors-just-got... > The juniors working this way compress their ramp dramatically. Tasks that used to take days take hours. Not because the AI does the work, but because the AI collapses the search space. Instead of spending three hours figuring out which API to use, they spend twenty minute…

Isn't the struggling with docs and learning how and where to find the answers part of the learning process? I would argue a machine that short circuits the process of getting stuck in obtuse documentation is actually harmful long term...

> learning how and where to find the answers part of the learning process?

Yes. And now you can ask the AI where the docs are.

The struggling is not the goal. And rest assured there are plenty of other things to struggle with.

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#309

Post by bdangubic »

ekkeke wrote: post #117
bdangubic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is a larger issue ? lacking domain knowledge? or lacking deeper understanding of years of shit in the codebase that seniors may have better understanding? where I work, there is no issue that it "too large" for a junior to take on, it is the only way that "junior" becomes "non-junior" - by doing, not by delegating to so-called seniors (I am one of them)

You can't give a junior tasks that require experience and nuance that have been acquired over years of development. If you babysit them, then perhaps but then what is the point? By it's nature "nuance" is something hard to describe concretely but as someone who has mentored a fair few juniors most of them don't have it. AI generally doesn't have it either. Juniors need tasks at the boundary of their capability, but n…

you work(ed) in some shitty places if you believe this to be true

Re: AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'

#310

Post by [deleted] »

rukuu001 wrote: post #299
rsanek wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"without losing face"? What culture are you referring to? The Western companies I have worked at do not discourage such questions -- in fact, it's often the sign of someone very senior when they ask a seemingly 'dumb' question that others have taken for granted.

Think of highly competitive environments where looking foolish can be weaponised against you. They definitely exist here (my experience in UK and Australia)

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