I think not hiring juniors is a tragedy of the commons situation. It started before the AI boom, during COVID. It's not tax-related as people claim here, since this phenomenon is not US-only.

The ZIRP era made companies hire people as if there was no tomorrow, and companies started "poaching" engineers from others, including juniors. I saw some interns with 2 years of experience getting offers as seniors. I had friends being paid to attend boot camp.

Then everyone realized they were training junior engineers who would quickly get offers from other companies as “Senior" and leave. So companies stopped hiring them.

Also AI hype is sucking all capital out of traditional hiring