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

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491–500 of 554 posts

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

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My recommendation to mid-level, senior, and staff engineers is to keep questioning decisions and create a culture where that’s encouraged. Tell me you've never worked at FAANG without telling me you've never worked at FAANG...

Usually the people who question decisions are shot down because they don’t have a wholistic understanding of the decision and (respectfully) don’t have good arguments. This is only because they are focused on some narrow aspect of the business which distorts or reduces their visibility and understanding.

> Usually the people who question decisions are shot down because they don’t have a wholistic understanding of the decision and (respectfully) don’t have good arguments.

It takes months of dysfunction until the customer says "I do not want to work with you anymore" or until the "overtime and over budget" thing suddenly becomes too large and problems show up in numbers. Or until key team suddenly completely decomposes. Every single time I have seen that, multiple people tried to communicate about the issue and were shot down.

It is not like management was always "wholistically" right and everyone down there just dont see big picture or have bad arguments - they usually just do not know what is going on on lower levels. Failure to actually listen, whether because it feels bad or because it would take time is quite common.

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

#493
The main problem Garman overlooks is skill degradation. AI is excellent at helping a junior quickly draft boilerplate or find the right API, but it doesn't teach the essentials: debugging, systems thinking, and reading complex code. A junior who grows up on AI "crutches" risks never learning to solve the complex, ambiguous problems that distinguish a senior engineer.

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I fully agree with this view and I find that it's seniors who ask the 'dumb' questions. Everyone is worried about losing face in this precarious economy... But seniors are able to ask really smart questions as well so even their dumb questions sound smart... They can usually spin dumb questions into a smart questions by going one level deeper and bringing nuance into the discussion. This may be difficult to do f…

My experience as a team lead working with a lot of juniors is that they are terrified of losing face So much this! Both from my experience as Junior very many years ago and also with Juniors (and not so Juniors) today. tend to talk a big game Very big game. Claude does too. The kind of BS it spews in very confident language is amazing. As a team lead, I try to use language which expresses any doubts or knowledge gaps…

The fact that you mentioned Claude (LLMs) is interesting! I definitely feel like there is a parallel; maybe because AI sometimes hallucinates, people have built up a tolerance for this kind of speculative use of language from people as well.

About finding the superpower of each team member; after working with someone for a few months, I start to notice certain patterns in how they think. Sometimes there might be something they say once or a question they ask which makes me view them more favorably than before. Maybe they're fast, good at assembling stuff or slow but good at building stable core components. Maybe they're similar to me or maybe they have a skill I don't have or a certain interest/focus or way to approach problems that is different from me but is beneficial to the project and/or team.

It's a bit like playing a weird game of chess where you can't see the pieces properly at the beginning so everyone looks like a pawn initially; But then over time you discover that one person is a knight, another is a bishop, another is a queen... And you adapt your strategy as your visibility improves.

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

#495

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 agree, the routine is gone, but at what cost? Understanding "how our system fits together" means solving problems, reading code, and debugging. If those fundamental skills aren't built through "humiliating and boring" tasks, how will a junior understand how the system actually works, not just how it appears to work?

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

#496
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Isn't the struggle of sifting through a labyrinth of physical books and learning how and where to find the right answers part of the learning process? I would argue a machine that short-circuits the process of getting stuck in obtuse books is actually harmful long term...

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, or if you are trying to somehow diminish my statement by somehow claiming that online documentation is causing the same magnitude of harm compared to using a book?

Two things:

1 - I agree with you. A good printed resource is incredibly valuable and should be perfectly valid in this day and age.

2 - many resources are not in print, e.g. API docs, so I'm not sure how books are supposed to help here.

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but because the genie, used well, accelerates learning. This is "the kids will use the AI to learn and understand" level of cope no, the kids will copy and paste the solution then go back to their preferred dopamine dispenser

I've learned a lot of shit while getting AI to give me the answers, because I wanted to understand why it did what it did. It saves me a lot of time trying to fix things that would have never worked, so I can just spend time analyzing success. There might be value in learning from failure, but my guess is that there's more value in learning from success, and if the LLM doesn't need me to succeed my time is better spe…

Understanding "why it works" is one thing, understanding "why it should work this way and not another, and what the alternatives are" is entirely different. AI shows you just one of countless correct implementations. You might understand that single implementation, but not the entire theory behind it

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

#498

My experience is that juniors have an easier time to ramp up, but never get better at proper engineering (analysis) and development processes (debug). They also struggle to read and review code. I fear that unless you heavily invest in them and follow them, they might be condemned to have decades of junior experience.

If a quick start with AI is inevitable, then mentorship and review programs need to be re-evaluated. Seniors shouldn't just check for functionality; they should actively ask juniors to explain why the AI suggested a particular solution, what the alternatives are, and what risks it entails. The focus must shift to understanding, not just generation

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

#499
post #388

> “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…

if it isn't obvious already, his plan is to get other companies to train juniors so AWS can poach them when they become seniors

And only seniors! No measly mid-levels here please!

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

#500
post #14

This sounds like a comment from someone who doesn't have visibility into how good the models are getting and how close they are to fully autonomous, production-grade software development.

This is an easy theory to prove; if AI was anywhere close to a senior engineer, we'd see the costs of software development drop by a corresponding amount or quality would be going up. Not to mention delivery would become faster. With LLMs being accessible to the general public I'd also expect to see this in the open-source world. I see none of that happening - software quality is actually in freefall (but AI is not t…

TL;DR: Code is the easy part; and at least in the last few years was rarely the bottleneck so even if we get rid of coding we don't deliver infinity amount of software. The "What to build" usually takes longer than building it. The amount will only go up where coding was holding things up or the main portion of time spent in delivering software (Hint: It usually isn't even 20% of the time in delivery times in my experience). There's many other stages to the SDLC and lots of processes even before then for large scale systems.

On your point about a consultancy; many of the software dev consultancies will dry up w.r.t work. There won't be success as you state -> after all if your consultancy can do it so can an LLM so why do I need you as the middleman? After all just get Claude/Gemini/etc to do it for small things; you are already seeing this effect in things like graphic design, copywriting and other small creative skills. For large things with large complexity and judgement you need domain experts and guardrails again and other non-coding jobs -> that slows things down considerably so but still better to be in those jobs than anything requiring intelligence now.

As a result coding could easily be automated entirely and we may only see for example 20% increase in total "large" software velocity. As I mentioned in another comment it will be the people in the chain who produce little value but are required for other reasons (e.g. compliance, due diligence, sales, consultants, etc) that will remain and will be the bottleneck. The people that techies thought offered little value and made up inefficiencies and didn't contribute at all -> they have the last laugh in the end and they have AI to thank for that.

Personally in my team I know we are seeing significant improvement to the point where hiring is no longer considered; I'm worried about our senior staff even. Anything that is labor, and not deciding "what to do" I feel I no longer need help with nearly as much. This is many components in a large public org. Feel like I only need two staff now, and that's more to understand the problem and what to do then the action of actually doing it; and a backup for accountability. If I hire more its only because we I can't keep up with the AI and am burning out, and I won't because I don't want to "hire to fire" later on if we run out of product work. It makes me anxious, and I can't recommend anyone with honesty to make this their career anymore; anything else feels more like false hope at this point.

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