The End Of Jr Engineers

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Published 2024-07-05
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Article
sourcegraph.com/blog/the-death-of-the-junior-devel…
By: Steve Yegge | x.com/Steve_Yegge

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All Comments (21)
  • Seriously though. Even if you quit watching. Watch the end and my response. I do get quite frustrated and maybe lose my cool
  • @Kane0123
    Yep, these youngsters picked a terrible time to be born. Rookie error, better luck next time.
  • @EvilTim1911
    My entire life comes down to that meme "I should have been gaining experience and buying a home back in 1999 instead of being a toddler"
  • This article really just reads as "Oh sorry kid, you can't find a job? Well that's because senior devs like me convinced enough people that we could replace you with AI. But that's just a skill issue on your end, so in the meantime you should try to get better. Also, I happen to sell a book on how to replace you better, go buy it." Like, I don't understand those people who are shoulder-deep in the LLM hype. I don't see how their AI god is going to replacing any junior developer anytime soon: you need to babysit it, check each and every line of its output, distrust it, reword your question 4 to 5 times and chop each problem up into tiny bite-sized pieces. I guess you can ask another AI to help you with that, but now you need to babysit two AIs. Meanwhile, a junior developer will just take longer to complete a task and might ask you for guidance if they realize they're stuck. And if you're worried about letting a junior developer write the architecture of your app, then you should also equally worry about letting an AI do that.
  • @cjtantay
    Respect for prime for being an advocate of hope. These opportunists who'd rather add into the perception of doom just to sell you something do not deserve any of our attention. There are still hope out there for junior engineers.
  • Without junior developers you cannot have senior developers. Same with every other industry. You get rid of juniors altogether and you will have killed an industry in 30 years. So…not really sure how they would handle that.
  • @fdg-rt2rk
    Companies now: "need a senior developer who can work with a peanut salary of jr. developer"
  • I felt like globalization and localized pay is a much bigger challenge to overcome than LLM. I’ve seen job listings with ZERO open positions in the U.S. but then I switch my VPN location to India and magically 50+ listings appear for engineering in any path you want to go down. I converted the average salary to dollars and realized they are hiring full time engineers for $500 a month. That makes me more depressed than LLM.
  • @user-xw5tj4cb8x
    He works in company that does AI assistant, wow what a suprise
  • @world-9644
    Why are people pretending sr developers just spawn into existence each quarter? Juniors become seniors after some time and experience, without them this whole industry just collapses. Your not replacing jrs until you can replace everyone
  • This reminds me of those crypto articles talking about how crypto will replace every single type of banking transaction in the next couple of years.
  • @djcardwell
    I'm a senior engineer with over a decade of experience. The death of a junior engineer is the death of fresh minds and innovative solutions.
  • “A job you’ll enjoy”… a job that will pay the bills while you work on some sick projects.
  • The problem with replacing juniors with LLMs is that you won't be training up any new juniors, and all your seniors will retire and/or die, and you'll be left with a competency crisis that will make the current one we're going through look like a joke.
  • @russellbusch
    Lawyer here: large law firm, was a software engineer for years before law school, I'm on my 100+ attorney law firm's technology scouting committee. We've reviewed and used many AI products targeted at law. It's not even CLOSE to replacing junior associates. Hell, it isn't even close to replacing summer interns. Like with coding, it can make some tasks more productive. But much more than in coding it can be worse than a waste of time (lead you astray, etc.)
  • @DogeOfWar
    I actually teared up a little when you mentioned about never stealing hope from anyone. Well said.
  • Today if you do not resource juniors, tomorrow you won't have seniors
  • @xephael3485
    AI hype is insane... Its not even close to what people are making it out to be
  • @1989DP3
    The guy simped really hard for AI in this article. Very well summarized in the end.
  • @GlidarGlidar
    Watching "the end of jr Engineers" and in my recommended is a video called "Senior Engineers are a thing of the past". Are there any engineers still left?