391–400 of 554 posts
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Think of highly competitive environments where looking foolish can be weaponised against you. They definitely exist here (my experience in UK and Australia)
some of the descriptions above of thoughtful supportive work places where people are free to explore different ideas and question assumptions sound like paradise.
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Think of highly competitive environments where looking foolish can be weaponised against you. They definitely exist here (my experience in UK and Australia)
My entire career - New Zealand, and Australia - asking questions is weaponised (as I stated above) Graduate, Junior, Senior, Team Lead, - my title hasn't mattered to the response
(I believe you when you say that most of yours are like this.)
Yes, killing your talent pipeline is a horrible idea. But that's Future CEO's problem. When we need new seniors to backfill natural attrition, we can poach them from competitors.
And juniors don't make that much less money, either. Sure, there are people who do light frontend work on Wordpress sites and stuff, who make a lot less. But at my place of work, when we had junior SWEs (we either developed them into seniors in the past 3 years or let them attrition), they were making about ¾ of what seniors make. So, you can pay 4 juniors or you can pay 2-3 seniors. Arguably 1 senior using AI will be a lot more sustainable than 4 juniors burning tokens all day trying to get Cursor to do things they don't really even understand and can't evaluate effectively.
Anyway I completely agree that all of this, especially eliminating the bottom 2 steps of the career ladder for engineers, is horrible for our entire industry. But our incentive structure will richly reward companies for doing this. Stock price go up. Let Future CEO worry about it.
> “Number one, my experience is that many of the most junior folks are actually the most experienced with the AI tools. So they're actually most able to get the most out of them.” Would that experience be from cheating on their homework? Are you sure that's the skill you want to prioritize? > “Number two, they're usually the least expensive because they're right out of college, and they generally make less. So if you…
> “Number one, my experience is that many of the most junior folks are actually the most experienced with the AI tools. So they're actually most able to get the most out of them.” Would that experience be from cheating on their homework? Are you sure that's the skill you want to prioritize? > “Number two, they're usually the least expensive because they're right out of college, and they generally make less. So if you…
A big, and little-discussed, problem across many industries is that there is no "pipeline" inside any company. Since the 1980's, the idea that you develop your own talent has fallen by the wayside. You hire it from other companies. Inside software, the issue may be bigger, but it exists in many others as well.
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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"
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.
But yes on a personal level, being senior enough in my career, I’d rather be thought of as less skilled by asking questions before the s hits the fan, than execute and mismanage a project that I didn’t ask enough questions on. The latter has more consequences tbh.
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.
My experience as a team lead working with a lot of juniors is that they are terrified of losing face and tend to talk a big game. As a team lead, I try to use language which expresses any doubts or knowledge gaps I have so that others in my team feel comfortable doing it as well. But a key aspect is that you have to really know your stuff in certain areas because you need to inspire others to mirror you... They won't try to mirror you if they don't respect you, based on your technical ability.
You need to demonstrate deep knowledge in some areas and need to demonstrate excellent reasoning abilities before you can safely ask dumb questions IMO. I try to find the specific strengths and weaknesses of my team members. I give constructive criticism for weaknesses but always try to identify and acknowledge each person's unique superpower; what makes them really stand out within the team. If people feel secure in their 'superpower', then they can be vulnerable in other areas and still feel confident. It's important to correctly identify the 'superpower' though because you don't want a Junior honing a skill that they don't naturally possess or you don't want them to be calling shots when they should be asking for help.
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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…