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Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

franciscotrindade.me

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Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#51

Post by win311fwg »

threatofrain wrote: post #30
guywithahat wrote: post #25

There’s an irony too, in that junior engineers are more likely to understand and use AI tools, and quickly become more performant than their senior engineers asking questions on stack overflow. It’s what’s happening at my company and it feels silly since certain projects are way behind and constantly hiring because the very senior lead refuses to use AI

Seniors don’t use SO anymore, it virtually died if you look at traffic. The reason the market is so tough for juniors isn’t because seniors are bad at chat or agent workflows, it’s quite the opposite of what you say.

> Seniors don’t use SO anymore

Did they ever? SO wasn't around during my junior days so I never got to experience it from that angle, but it looked like it would have been an incredible resource for those who juniored in its heyday. However, I never found it to be successful in delivering to the problems I encountered as a senior.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#52

Post by linkjuice4all »

lbriner wrote: post #14

I'm not sure I understand the logic that we wouldn't hire Juniors because now we have AI. What jobs are Juniors doing that AI can now do? I don't get juniors to build me entire web sites or implement complicated agentic pieces of work. Most of the time, we hire Juniors to help fill the talent pool with the hope that they will be productive in a few months. If we think that we don't need to refill the pool now because…

I agree with you about juniors and remote work - but like everything else: just figure it out.

Your customers aren't sitting next to you several times a week, yet they have no problem paying you and expecting you to get your job done. Sure, you might need to meet in person a couple of times a year but if you're smart enough to use a computer you can figure out how to work with someone in a different location. The issue is probably not the distance.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#53

Post by wizzwizz4 »

daun_gee wrote: post #43
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mildly upsets me, because I think the impulse to denigrate that which we oppose is a harmful one which, if cultivated, we can all too readily turn on people who don't deserve it. But it's not a real slur for real people. (Note that in Star Wars , where many people got this slur from, droids are – or at least, have the potential to be – people, albeit they are usually enslaved, and subject to arbitrary mind wipes.)…

"Retard" is a forbidden curse (read: slur) that holds great power in the English language. I understand the risks of using this sort of language, and yet still I have determined that it is prudent to use the harshest rhetorical weapons that we have available to resist the large AI firms. "Clanker" much less potent, much less powerful. I want an anti-AI slogan that stays in people's minds after they leave this comment…

The literal meaning of the word is "delayed", which seems less descriptive than the words you rejected in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49183728. Do you understand why this word is "forbidden"? What's the advantage over a more vulgar word like "fuckwit"?

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#54

Post by andrewfromx »

I don't understand when he says "the job has changed to using agents but human judgement is still required" and then goes on with that assumption will remain true for our lifetimes basically. But the elephant in the room is that's going away very soon right?

Think back to 2024 and how your job has changed over the last two years. It went from science fiction to reality. And as engineers surely we understand the concept of expotential growth. It's not just us outsiders using claude to make our code but internal anthropic engineers are using it to make claude itself better. (Probably they also use openai and gemini to double check stuff!) And that's the expotential loop. Does anyone really believe in 2028 human judgement will still be the thing?

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#55

Post by inigyou »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #23
inigyou wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we worried about offending the machine?

No, we're worried about contributing to a hostile environment for people who have nothing to do with this complaint. To illustrate: replace the slur with a racial or sexist one, and see how it reads. If you want to insult people, take the time to come up with a relevant insult: don't just fire your gun into the air.

If someone said ChatGPT was a whiny bitch, I'd think them a bit odd, but I wouldn't start complaining about sexism.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#56

Post by daun_gee »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #53
daun_gee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Retard" is a forbidden curse (read: slur) that holds great power in the English language. I understand the risks of using this sort of language, and yet still I have determined that it is prudent to use the harshest rhetorical weapons that we have available to resist the large AI firms. "Clanker" much less potent, much less powerful. I want an anti-AI slogan that stays in people's minds after they leave this comment…

The literal meaning of the word is "delayed", which seems less descriptive than the words you rejected in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49183728 . Do you understand why this word is "forbidden"? What's the advantage over a more vulgar word like "fuckwit"?

[dead]

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#57

Post by win311fwg »

andrewfromx wrote: post #54

I don't understand when he says "the job has changed to using agents but human judgement is still required" and then goes on with that assumption will remain true for our lifetimes basically. But the elephant in the room is that's going away very soon right? Think back to 2024 and how your job has changed over the last two years. It went from science fiction to reality. And as engineers surely we understand the conce…

> Think back to 2024 and how your job has changed over the last two years.

The programming language became a lot more terse. I press the keys on the keyboard considerably less now. Otherwise, I don't see much difference. The human end hasn't changed. Neither I, nor do I expect anyone else here, was hired to be a monkey infinitely typing to produce Shakespeare in software, so the human end is what the job is and always was.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#58

Post by hectdev »

andrewfromx wrote: post #54

I don't understand when he says "the job has changed to using agents but human judgement is still required" and then goes on with that assumption will remain true for our lifetimes basically. But the elephant in the room is that's going away very soon right? Think back to 2024 and how your job has changed over the last two years. It went from science fiction to reality. And as engineers surely we understand the conce…

Maybe if hypothetically all stakeholders express all of their concerns and desires clearly in channels AI can pick up constantly.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#59

Post by frmersdog »

alephnerd wrote: post #11
potentdream wrote: post #4

very hard for junior engineers out there now.

There are too many new grads and the quality bar outside of target programs has dropped nor never existed to begin with. And the target programs graduate around 15-20k EECS adjacent majors a year. It's hard to justify hiring a (choosing random college) CS@Ouachita Baptist University grad for $140K TC (50th percentile for an entry level SWE) or even $100K TC [0] (25th percentile for an entry level SWE) unless they are…

There wouldn't be too many new grads if all the capital wasn't locked up in a few Death Stars. A robust job market needs

  oodles and oodles of dumb, doomed small businesses and start-up companies chasing stupid products and services that will never succeed long-term
which employ

  not just top-of-class grads, but also mediocre grads and people who taught themselves from a few library books and even that one guy who can't build anything but is amazing at point out flaws and potential stumbling blocks
who

  learn from their mistakes at these companies and grow into knowledgeable and diligent workers from the experiences they have actually working.
Instead, all of the money is locked up in VC and passive funds that are chasing the same companies and technologies and applicants as everyone else. All at the exact same time, even; there's no one sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the model du jour to fail so that they can fund another approach later. This is beyond grads and schools. The entire ecosystem is a generational disaster, which is why we're seeing unprecedented bank bailouts and unprecedented monetary policy working at backstopping and sling-shotting into unprecedented capital market highs. In other words, we stuck one big egg in the incubator, and we're doing everything and anything to keep it from going bad, because we only have the one big egg.

There is a temptation to declare a conspiracy against Millennials and Zoomers, but it's probably more likely that our "job creators" are just that stupid and self-interested.

Re: Not hiring junior engineers won't solve the problem you think you have

#60

Post by trubetskov »

MattGaiser wrote: post #22
lbriner wrote: post #14

I'm not sure I understand the logic that we wouldn't hire Juniors because now we have AI. What jobs are Juniors doing that AI can now do? I don't get juniors to build me entire web sites or implement complicated agentic pieces of work. Most of the time, we hire Juniors to help fill the talent pool with the hope that they will be productive in a few months. If we think that we don't need to refill the pool now because…

I guess a lot of this depends on whether you consider juniors to be part of your talent pool. Unless you are retaining them, it is just subsidizing industry at large to train them. I stayed less than a year at my first two jobs. They bet wrong.

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