[sss123123]

I’ve been a senior SWE (~10 years in backend and infra) and I’d say your observation is partially true. Juniors often use AI as a “crutch” — they rely on it to fill gaps in fundamentals or recall syntax. Seniors, on the other hand, use it strategically:

Code review & refactoring assistant: I use AI to sanity-check my design or spot potential edge cases.

Exploration & learning: When evaluating a new library or framework, I ask AI for comparisons or best practices.

Docs summarization: LLMs help me parse long RFCs or documentation quickly.

Prototyping / boilerplate: For scaffolding boring repetitive code.

But not for actual algorithmic thinking or critical code — those still rely on human judgment.

In short: top engineers do use AI, but they use it like they use Stack Overflow — a tool for leverage, not a crutch.