Comment by JohnMakin
14 days ago
> Based on listening to engineers on various podcasts, almost all of them describe the current level of AI agents as being equivalent to a junior engineer: they're eager and think they know a lot but they also have a lot to learn. But we're getting closer to the point where a well-thought out Skill [1] can do a pretty convincing job of replacing a junior engineer.
The people that comment as such are either so disconnected from the software development process or so bought in on the hype that they are forgetting what the point of a junior role is in the first place.
If you hire a junior and they're exactly as capable as a junior 3 years later (about how far we're in now) many organizations would consider letting that employee go. The point of hiring a junior is that you get a (relative to the market) cheap investment with a long-term payoff. Within 1-2 years if they are any good, they will not be very junior any more (depending on domain, of course). There is no such promise or guarantee with AI, and employing an army of junior engineers that can't really "learn" is not a future I want to live in as a mid-career senior-ish person.
Of course, you can say "oh, it'll improve, don't worry" but I live in the present and I simply do not see that. I "employ" a bunch of crappy agents I have to constantly babysit only to output more work "units" I could before at the cost of some quality. If I had spent the money on a junior I would only have to babysit for the first little while and then they can be more autonomous. Even if they can improve beyond this, relying on the moat of "AI" provider companies to make this happen is not exactly comfortable either.
> The point of hiring a junior is that you get a (relative to the market) cheap investment with a long-term payoff.
This is only a consideration if you can pay enough to keep the junior for the long term pay off.
Companies that aren't offering Big Tech compensation find it very difficult to compete on this.
The best juniors will get a job paying more than your company can offer in 2 years. The worst juniors will remain the "still haven't progressed beyond what they could do after the first month."
In this situation, unless the company can continue to offer pay increases to match what Big Tech can offer, it is disadvantageous to hire a junior developer.
This is absolutely FUD.
Most engineers don't work at FAANG. Most _good_ engineers DONT work at FAANG. FAANG is still composed of almost all good engineers. Most software engineers are NOT _good_.
All of these things are simultaneously true.
Most of your junior engineering hires will never develop to FAANG levels, and as such are never in positions to seriously only hypercompete for those FAANG salaries. There vast majority of devs, even in the US, that are perfectly adequate (note, not great, adequate) to act as developers for non-FAANG companies for non-FAANG wages. This is the kind of developer universities are churning out at insane rates.
Sorry, but this overwhelmingly has not been my experience in nearly a decade working in tech. Even if you get 2-3 years out of a junior before they jump ship to a "big tech" (not as easy or common as you make it sound, by the way, especially during the last few years of layoffs and hiring freezes), you likely have reaped far more benefits at a low cost relative to the market than the ramp-up time investment in the junior. Furthermore, the talent pipeline here benefits everyone - even if they jump ship elsewhere, because you could not promote or otherwise mentor them into staying, you can also hire these "jump ship" engineers on the other side of the pipeline.
When this dries up because the market stops investing in junior engineers, you're left with absolutely nothing after a mere handful of years. I worry about this future a lot. Luckily I am in a shop that does not mind hiring them (now is a super good time to find junior talent at a good price too).