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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'

#431

Post by rustystump »

golly_ned wrote: post #420
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…

> Instead of spending three hours figuring out which API to use, they spend twenty minutes evaluating options the AI surfaced This really isn't the case from what I've seen. It's that they use Cursor or other code generation tools integrated into their development environment to generate code, and if it's functional and looks from a fuzzy distance like 'good' code (in the 'code in the small' sense), they send an over…

This. I have seen MRs with generated open cv lut mapping in them because a junior didnt understand that what they needed was a simple interpolation function.

The crux is always that you dont know what u dont know. AI doesnt fix this.

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

#432

Post by noisy_boy »

tpoacher wrote: post #372
lvspiff wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

in fairness, these do not sound like "dumb" questions. Some questions really are dumb and bring no value to the table. The key is knowing which is which, and that is the part that comes with experience.

> Some questions really are dumb and bring no value to the table.

They do tell you that the person asking them either isn't getting it, which is valuable information, or that they are trying to ask questions for the sake of it, which is also valuable information.

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

#433

Post by rgoulter »

macintux wrote: post #201
tencentshill wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The naturally curious will remain naturally curious and be rewarded for it, everyone else will always take the shortest path offered to complete the task.

> The naturally curious will remain naturally curious and be rewarded for it Maybe. The naturally curious will also typically be slower to arrive at a solution due to their curiosity and interest in making certain they have all the facts. If everyone else is racing ahead, will the slowpokes be rewarded for their comprehension or punished for their poor metrics?

> If everyone else is racing ahead, will the slowpokes be rewarded for their comprehension or punished for their poor metrics?

It's always possible to go slower (with diminishing benefits).

Or I think putting it in terms of benefits and risks/costs: I think it's fair to have "fast with shallow understanding" and "slower but deeper understanding" as different ends of some continuum.

I think what's preferable somewhat depends on context & attitude of "what's the cost of making a mistake?". If making a mistake is expensive, surely it's better to take an approach which has more comprehensive understanding. If mistakes are cheap, surely faster iteration time is better.

The impact of LLM tools? LLM tools increase the impact of both cases. It's quicker to build a comprehensive understanding by making use of LLM tools, similar to how stuff like autocompletion or high-level programming languages can speed up development.

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

#434

Post by panny »

Isn't it weird how nobody here cared about Silicon Valley ageism until it hurt junior developers. No, I don't have schadenfreude. I just see a bunch of people, even in this very thread, now claiming juniors somehow understand AI tools better than seniors. Even though we've all had the same amount of time to use them.

At some point, admit you have a problem maybe? Maybe that will only happen after you spent 20 years staying on top of the latest tools and tech only to be told you're out of style because your hair started to grey.

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

#435

Post by rudnevr »

I don't know, I've always thought that junior problem was mostly non-technical, kids issues: overconfidence, love for shortcuts, sense of entitlement, arrogance, lack of communication and respect of colleagues, including fellow juniors and seniors, aversion to holy wars, lack of compromise and team discipline, disrespect to existing solutions, laziness in following-up post-delivery, negligent edge case checking, being opinionated about tooling, languages and whatnot. Very little of this can be fixed with AI, and many things can be easily amplified. I mean, one junior with AI vs one senior with AI might yield comparable results, but seven juniors with AI vs seven seniors with AI should fail pretty fast.

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

#436

Post by doctaj »

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.

There’s also the benefit of being naive - like, juniors can be seriously audacious when they haven’t been burned a million times. I miss having excitement and optimism.

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

#437

Post by rudnevr »

golly_ned wrote: post #430
zahlman wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't learn. That's not what I'm trying to do- I'm trying to fix the bug. Hmm. I'm pretty sure AI is going to lead us to a deskilling crash. Nothing is preventing you from studying how the bugfix works once it's in place. Nor is there any reason this use of AI should cause you to lose skills you already have.

I haven't seen things work like this in practice, where heavy AI users end up being able to generating a solution, then later grasp it and learn from it, with any kind of effectiveness or deep understanding. It's like reading the solution to a math proof instead of proving it yourself. Or writing a summary of a book compared to reading one. The effort towards seeing the design space and choosing a particular solution…

that's true, and nice comparison with tests.

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

#438

Post by aut0m8d »

doctaj wrote: post #436
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.

There’s also the benefit of being naive - like, juniors can be seriously audacious when they haven’t been burned a million times. I miss having excitement and optimism.

This is huge and quite underrated I think. There are some angles that are really hard to see through a weathered lens.

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

#439

Post by PunchyHamster »

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 don't think many orgs learn all that much from coaching their juniors, at least after first few.

Juniors are just... necessary in the balance, have to little of them and the mid and senior devs will get more and more expensive, so you hire a bunch of juniors, they get trained on job, and it balances it out.

Hell, if company does it right they might underpay junior-turned-senior for decade before they notice and look how industry pay looks like!

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

#440

Post by bdangubic »

ekkeke wrote: post #387
bdangubic wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps, I don't consider them shitty myself but palates differ. Is engineering nirvana a place where tasks are such that any can been done by a junior engineer, and the concept of engineering skill developed through experience is non-existent?

> Is engineering nirvana a place where tasks are such that any can been done by a junior engineer, and the concept of engineering skill developed through experience is non-existent?

how does one junior acquire engineering skills except through experience as you said?

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