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Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

You think junior devs, as the positions exist today, are going to be sticky in the face of coding LLMs?

Smart juniors shouldn't be juniors long. I think another angle to think about this is Junior devs that can leverage AI to learn have a much shorter path to Senior than current Seniors had to take (aka the hard way). If as a Junior you know of things to look out for but don't know the implementation details, AI can help you.

For really obscure issues or bugs, I had to scroll through seemingly random StackOverflow results (or Experts Exchange, ha) looking for exact issues that I had, weeding through answers that weren't relevant, things based on older versions, etc. Now you give the context to AI tech stack, data, and your source code, explain the problem with the error message, and ask what might be happening and that shaves a few hours off the old way of trial and error. Even if the 1st answer isn't totally right, a few follow on questions will help narrow it down.

The hard way makes for better quality.

I can have 18% BMI with ozempic, or I can have 18% BMI running and lifting weights. "We are not the same" to quote the meme [0].

The LLM-bros can do LLM-bro stuff. The hardened Seniors that have seen/done it all are the ones you need on a crisis.

[0]: https://i.imgflip.com/5yhw7e.jpg

The tradeoff is that searching for answers develops people's ability to do research in general. It's an essential skill to be able to skim though material quickly and decide if it's relevant or not. it's in the same way that calculators save labor on large calculations, but giving up all of one's mathematical intuition in exchange for a better calculator would be decrease in net performance.

How else are you going to get senior+ level engineers going forward?

Ha! That's the rub: we won't. :(

In the same way that we don't get the volume of true hackers that the 70s-90s produced, because of the locked-down computing experiences most kids were introduced to from 00+.

Yes. But why would a company today hire a junior dev? If I have limited budget, why hire a junior dev instead of poaching a mid level developer from somewhere else?

A junior dev does negative work. And with corp dev/enterprise dev the difference in price between a junior and a “senior” dev is only about $70K. The gap is even smaller with remote work even if you hire in the US. There are plenty of developers in low cost of living areas who would be glad to work for relative peanuts.

As far as where will the next generation of developers come from? That’s a collection action problem

Sometimes you want them "in 2 years from now" so you 'buy' them now. Also sometimes you want someone to do 3 out of 10 tasks of the job for a couple of years, and then get them to do another 4 out of 10, an ultimately get them to do 10/10 in 6-7 years from now.

I remember those years, I hope they are still around.

In 2 years from now, you’re going to want to promote them but your HR department is not going to give them the raise that would keep them there so they are going to find another job. They are going to watch new people come in in two years making market rates - salary compression.

The average tenure of a developer is 2-3 years. Almost no one stays at a company for 6-7 years

As a manager, the chance of you staying at a job for 6-7 years are slim and staying in the same position is even slimmer. Besides, you are going to be measured by your quarterly or at most yearly “OP1 goals” or equivalent

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