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

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

finalroundai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 554 posts

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

#331

Post by lingrush4 »

aerhardt wrote: post #238
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…

I mean, that’s an interesting take, but “having people around to ask dumb questions” is not why most orgs hire juniors.

In my experience, juniors are absolutely terrified of asking any sort of question at all during a meeting. Senior engineers are far more likely to ask interesting, useful questions.

We hire juniors so that we can offload easy but time-consuming work on them while we focus on more important or more difficult problems. We also expect that juniors will eventually gain the skills to solve the more difficult problems as a result of the experience they gain performing the easy tasks.

If we stop hiring juniors now, then we won't have any good senior engineers in 5-10 years.

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

#332

Post by Rodeoclash »

baxtr wrote: post #329
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.

I am bit more senior nowadays. Whenever I don’t understand something I say something like: "Uh, I’m probably the only one here, but I don’t get it…"

I'm the CTO and probably one of the most common things I'll say is "help me understand X"

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

#333

Post by lvspiff »

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.

100% agree and more credit if I could give it!

Even as a lead I ask the dumb question when no one else does just because when i can see the look in people faces or realize no one is chiming in the dumb question is needed to ensure everyone drives the point home. I've never been met with any sort of looking down upon nor do i discourage any of my staff - quite the opposite - I champion them for being willing to speak up.

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

#334

Post by realityfactchex »

avgDev wrote: post #114
mjr00 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to university 2005-2008 and I was advised by many people at the time to not go into computer science. The reasoning was that outsourced software developers in low-cost regions like India and SEA would destroy salaries, and software developers should not expect to make more than $50k/year due to the competition. Even more recently we had this with radiologists, a profession that was supposed to be crushed by de…

I went for CS in my late 20s, always tinkered with computers but didn't get into programming earlier. College advisor told me the same thing, and that he went for CS and it was worthless. This was 2012. I had a job lined up before graduating. Now make high salary for the area, work remotely 98% of the time and have flexible schedule. I'm so glad I didn't listen to that guy.

The single most costly mistake I ever made, in hindsight, was talking myself out of a CS trajectory and into something more "practical" circa 2003.

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

#335

Post by lanstin »

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 have worked at a place where people were routinely criticized for asking basic questions on a big all-dev DL (which was archived and searchable, so they actually added to a growing record). The preferred solution was to ask a co-worker on the same team. People were answered a lot of questions were also criticized for being helpful. In neither case was the criticism that much from devs but from managers and given in boss feedback directly to people. Also it had a problem with spreading a good culture and common technical vision to new people, for some reason ( /s )

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

#337

Post by lanstin »

simsla wrote: post #302
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.

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 hav…

In general there are so many different sub-fields of knowledge that it's extremely confining to stay in one area of expertise; the slow uneducated person that has been working to keep some giant build farm running and migrating projects and helping fix tickets for 5 years will have a lot of expertise you don't have if you have a more casual experience of the system.

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

#338

Post by Yodel0914 »

amrocha wrote: post #244
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…

I disagree. In my experience AI does most of the work and the juniors already poor skills atrophy. Then a senior engineer has to review AI slop and tell the junior to roll the AI dice again.

I’m so sick of getting “but copilot said…” responses on PR comments.

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

#339

Post by johnfn »

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…

> 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.

This seems almost entirely wrong to me? That anyone, at any level of seniority, can ask "dumb questions" and give signal about "nonsense abstractions" seems a property of any healthy organization. That only juniors can do this doesn't just seem wrong, it seems backwards. I would expect seniors to have the clearest idea on whether abstractions make sense, not juniors.

Post reply on HN