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Comment by ltbarcly3 | Hacker News Reader

In 2026 a Junior Engineer is just Claude Code with a bad UI, higher latency, and extra steps. Literally.

I wouldn't even considering hiring a junior engineer at this point. The ROI was already barely breakeven for any but the top of the top junior engineers as they are likely to move on before they are meaningfully contributing.

With AI in the mix the ROI for Junior Engineers is strongly negative for 2 reasons:

1. (obvious) I can just have Claude Code do the work a junior engineer would have done with faster turnaround and generally better results.

2. (less obvious) Junior engineers are going to just turn around and use Claude Code, so now I'm talking to an AI and playing the telephone game, and the Junior engineer isn't going to learn much if anything in the process.

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Can I add:

1a. If you train it enough, one day you'll be able to trust that it's going to be able to execute what you want correctly, and you don't have to meticulously go through each line to find any issues.

to your list of arguments?

Because just like a junior human, training Claude will make it a capable senior developer, right...?

/S because this is the Internet.

You didn't read my comment. Literally addressed this point when I said "the Junior engineer isn't going to learn much if anything in the process"

People don't want to hear this, but it's true, especially the part about the junior developer just using Claude Code themselves.

We may still be too early on the curve of AI usage for AI to be the major driver of the labor market changes, but we also have no clue about what to do about it.

Often the conversation puts "Using AI ourself" at odds with "Delegating to a junior developer", but the junior developer is going to be using AI just like the rest of us further bringing into question the value of junior developers (and eventually senior engineers).

What really is the next step? (Rhetorical question since nobody knows)

Yeah I have the same issue with code reviews now. I can put some comments in, but they're just going to get forwarded to AI for addressing, so should I just tell my AI instead and make my comment in the form of a commit, saving a hop?

The basic workplace automation loop is:

1. Find what people are spending most of their time on and automate it.

2. As automation takes hold, people will adjust and their time is now mostly spent on things that aren't automated.

3. Goto 1.

Step 1 used to be 3-24 months building an app or feature, now it's often just finding the right prompt. The end states I see are:

a. We've achieved AGI and eventually everything is automated, the loop stops, and the notion of employment is over.

b. We're stuck on AGI and eventually there's nothing left that can be automated, the loop stops and humans are all employed for work that is unsuited for automation.

c. We've achieved AGI but businesses and societies can't react fast enough to ever fully absorb it, and we're all constantly in limbo going through the loop at ridiculous speeds.

I'm leaning c but indeed, who knows.

The 2nd is very true

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