Many have predicted the death of the “junior engineer” thanks to AI; after all, if AI can do all of the simple tasks, we don’t need to hire people who are only capable of handling those tasks…

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Camille Fournier

The trend towards hiring only senior engineers due to AI displacing simple tasks is shortsighted. The distinction between 'senior' and 'junior' engineers is evolving, with 'early career' becoming a preferred term. Companies benefit from nurturing early career engineers, who eventually grow into valuable senior positions. Over-reliance on hiring externally for senior roles can backfire as these individuals may struggle to adapt to the company's culture. Investing in early career hires fosters long-term growth and adaptability within the organization.

The Senior Shortcut

I love the ideas of this article!
And I think that, even Gen AI aside, it can also encourage employers to hire early career engineers without requesting for an entry level of “junior with 5+ years of experience”.
I would like to add that in my opinion, experienced engineers are still a must-keep (in moderate proportions) to train the early engineers and help them grow. I’ve seen projects piling up technical debt and early career engineers taking bad habits because of a lack of skillful teachers.

I like the idea of this article. Being junior or senior does not say much about the person. You will always hear people say “yeah, I had xy senior engineer, he was worse than a junior”. This is because junior/senior is measured in time, not in experience:
<ul>
<li>Have you ever migrated a large application from x to y?</li>
<li>Have you ever dealt with a service that gets &gt;50,000 requests?</li>
</ul>
I think experience can be related to time, but often it isn’t.

What these companies also seem to be missing is that if no junior engineers are hired, there won’t be any new senior engineers within a couple years.
Seems like they would be betting on replacing senior engineers within five years too 🤔

low key i am a big fan of ai myself and it has been impactful, and i think early careers dont just cut it anymore, but what can i say, you need people to do the dirty work for you.