[insane_dreamer]

> junior dev faking competence

A bit on a tangent, but has there been any discussion of how junior devs in the future are ever going to get past that stage and become senior dev calibre if companies can replace the junior devs with AIs? Or is the thinking we'll be fine until all the current senior devs die off and by then AI will be able to replace them too so we won't need anyone?

1. CS/Eng degree 2. ??? 3. Senior dev!

[wvenable]

It's definitely as good as junior dev at a lot of tasks but you always have to be in the driver seat. I don't ask junior devs to write functions one at a time. I give them a task, they ping me if they need something, but otherwise I hope I don't hear from them again for a while.

I don't see AI replacing that. AI is a tool with the instant Q&A intelligence of a junior dev but it's not actually doing the job of a junior dev. That's a subtle distinction.

[dragonwriter]

Training will adapt to the widespread use of AI coding assistance if they are that universally useful, and people will come into the market as junior AI wranglers, with skillsets stronger than curent junior devs is some areas but weaker in others; current seniors will grumble about holes in their knowledge, but that's been the case with the generational changes in software development as the common problems people face at different levels have shifted over time. The details are new, but the process isn't.

[insane_dreamer]

Not if the goal is to replace the junior devs with AIs -- people won't be "coming into the market" because they won't be needed.

Companies are not saving money by paying for AI tools if they continue to hire the same number of people. The only way it makes financial sense, and for the enormous amounts of money being invested into AI to reap profits, is if companies are able to reduce the cost of labor. First, they only need 75% of the junior devs they have now, then 50%, then 25%.

[dragonwriter]

> Not if the goal is to replace the junior devs with AIs -- people won't be "coming into the market" because they won't be needed.

It won't happen all at once, and as tasks done by current juniors are incrementally taken over by AI, the expected entry skillset will evolve in line with those changes. There will always be junior people in the field, but their expected knowledgebase and tasks will evolve, and even if 100% of the work currently done by juniors is eventually AI-ified, there will still be juniors, they just will be doing completely different things, and going through a completely different learning process to get there.

> Companies are not saving money by paying for AI tools if they continue to hire the same number of people.

Companies which have a fixed lump of tech work (in practice, none, actually) will save money because they will hire fewer total workers because output per worker will increase, but they will still have people who are newer and more experienced within that set, because the

More realistic companies that either make money with tech work or that apply internal effort to tech as long as it has net positive utility may actually end up spending more on tech, because each dollar spent gives more results. This still saves money (or makes more money), but the savings (where it is about savings, and not revenue) will be in the areas tech is applied to, not tech itself.