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AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

franciscotrindade.me

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Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#51

Post by franciscomt »

vee-kay wrote: post #4
franciscomt wrote: post #2

Author here. My last post on this reached the front page, and the main objection was that after AI, the junior's marginal value is gone: if a junior just passes specs to an AI tool and PRs back, why pay the salary? That deserved a real answer, so I wrote this post. Short version: that describes a problem with how the role is structured, not what juniors can do. Push back welcome.

If an intern can do the work of a technical lead, architect, software designer, or project manager, why do we need such expensive resources? Just fire all the seniors (including the CxOs) and let the interns run the company as lowest-paid temporary contractors, with the help of AI. /s

They surely cannot. But they can own simple problems end to end.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#52

Post by bonzini »

franciscomt wrote: post #11
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #8

> The junior engineer executes it, which nowadays means prompting it to an AI tool, and creating a pull request (PR). The PR receives feedback from more senior engineers. The junior engineer gets the feedback and takes it to the AI tool again, proposing changes. Yeah this part should not exist anymore. It doesn’t where I work. When I get a PR I just ask an agent to make the proposed changes. There is absolutely zero…

I agree. Although I think that was never the job. Even without AI, the practice of subdividing work into coding tasks was not a good one. AI just made it obvious.

Even if AI does the coding, I cannot understand the architecture of a change unless you split it in individual tasks that are "as small as possible but no smaller". And even if AI does the code review, the architecture review falls onto me.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#53

Post by dataviz1000 »

WhyIsItAlwaysHN wrote: post #37
dataviz1000 wrote: post #17

This is something I've been thinking about the last couple days: how to get junior engineers to be valuable. I developed a system to help prepare for leet coding interviews so I never feel lost under pressure solving a problem again. It is like a debugger that steps through the code showing all the values of all the variables with data visualizations that reflect the logic so I can grok what it is doing. [0] After I…

Is this just an ad for the product? How is this connected specifically to junior engineers? Is it implying that they cannot debug code without this kind of tool while more experienced people can?

There is no product!

Yesterday claude code built a console that steps through algorithms: one shot. There was a bug with a value being incorrect. I thought this would be a great way to automated visualizing and stepping through code during a PR review.

I'm sitting in a room with a computer by myself where I was thinking yesterday about a way that AI can add value to junior engineers. I see a post and discussion about junior engineer's value so I shared what I'm think and working on.

Hopefully I'm contributing to the conversation here and I can get feedback good or bad about how to approach improving junior engineer's value.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#54

Post by lelanthran »

franciscomt wrote: post #18
lelanthran wrote: post #9

> If the assumption is that AI is going to radically simplify the technical portion of the role, then the people who have started their careers with AI will be in the best spot once they have acquired the experience. This doesn't make sense - AI is to allow unskilled people to produce what was previously only produced by skilled people. IOW, how does having 2 years of experience using an LLM to generate code beat hav…

I think it’s an oversimplification to say that using AI for se dev is a trivial skill. You can see it even now with some people chatting with Claude and others running multiple agents in a loop. There’s skill in that.

> There’s skill in that.

Yeah, but it's a trivial skill that the people who learned it took maybe a week to learn it.

Unless LLMs never improve, the odds are good that even less time would be needed to get up to speed in a 2030 SOTA.

I mean, the whole reason for LLM usage is to produce something with little to no skill needed. That's literally what they are designing it for.

So it's unlikely that having a headstart using LLMs leads to any advantage.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#55

Post by throwatdem12311 »

headchipper wrote: post #45
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good riddance. Worked with many offshored firms before, from all over the world. The work was subpar before and it’s even worse now. Now I can fire off agents ona remote box to do the grunt work and open PRs, then just prompt to review/iterate it. No timezone timezone delays or language barriers. Nearly instant feedback. Coding is solved. Engineering is not. Catch up or be left behind.

[flagged]

> created 5 minutes ago

lol

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#56

Post by ModernMech »

conradfr wrote: post #49
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #8

> The junior engineer executes it, which nowadays means prompting it to an AI tool, and creating a pull request (PR). The PR receives feedback from more senior engineers. The junior engineer gets the feedback and takes it to the AI tool again, proposing changes. Yeah this part should not exist anymore. It doesn’t where I work. When I get a PR I just ask an agent to make the proposed changes. There is absolutely zero…

Ownership of what then?

Ownership of the delivered code. This takes authorship out of the equation -- doesn't matter who wrote it, only matters who owns it and can be blamed for it. Not having written it doesn't absolve blame when something goes bad.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#57

Post by franciscomt »

jt2190 wrote: post #48

> This summer, we assigned the problem to an intern (that’s less tenure than a junior engineer). The intern led the development of this feature. They talked to the product manager to understand the problem and requirements. They wrote the design document on how to approach it, aligned with the team, and built it. Of course they did that with the help of AI, and the team they were working with. So, interns can still p…

Thanks. How do you think that lowers the value of an intern, can you explain it?

You're right that pre-AI that feature would not have been given to an intern (because they wouldn't be able to own it). So pre-AI, customers had a problem, we paid the intern, but could not solve the problem. Post-AI, the same problem exist, we pay the same intern. The customer problem is solved.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#58

Post by franciscomt »

treyd wrote: post #40

I couldn't disagree more. Juniors have very poor design sense and can't guide the AI to land in the right spot. Consistently on my team the developers who are the most reliant on AI are causing me the most trouble. They produce a lot of code but constantly make the same mistakes and can't seem to learn and improve their own design skills, or are doing it at a snail's pace.

I agree with the sentiment. But is that exclusive to junior engineers? Curious if you think that the same problem exists with senior engineers or not.

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#59

Post by jtrn »

olsondv wrote: post #36

It largely depends on the person. We have several junior engineers who cannot solve a problem without AI. When AI can’t solve it, they just keep trying and failing. And I mean weeks to months late. Then rinse and repeat on the next task. It used to be that they would have been forced to seek help from a senior engineer. Combine the teaching with a real struggle is what makes them better. As it is now, they aren’t bei…

[flagged]

Re: AI didn't erase the junior engineer's value, it increased it it

#60

Post by kibwen »

jtrn wrote: post #59
olsondv wrote: post #36

It largely depends on the person. We have several junior engineers who cannot solve a problem without AI. When AI can’t solve it, they just keep trying and failing. And I mean weeks to months late. Then rinse and repeat on the next task. It used to be that they would have been forced to seek help from a senior engineer. Combine the teaching with a real struggle is what makes them better. As it is now, they aren’t bei…

[flagged]

LLMs are not even remotely comparable to compilers. This attempt at analogy is neither humorous nor insightful.
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