If entry-level roles are shrinking, how should companies rethink talent development? Without the traditional “bottom rungs,” how do we grow future seniors if fewer juniors ever get the chance to start?

When were companies ever thinking about talent development, especially for SWE? We had some loose "mentorship" roles but IME most folks are left to their own devices or just learn by bandwagoning things from reddit.

I think open source contributions/projects will still be a way to gain verifiable experience.

Other than that, I guess developing software in some capacity while doing a non-strictly software job - say, in accounting, marketing, healtcare, etc. This might not be a relevant number of people if 'vibe coding' takes hold and the fundamentals are not learned/ignored by these accountants, marketers, healthcare workers, etc.

If that is the case, we'd have a lot of 'informed beginners' with 10+ years of experience tangentially related to software.

Edit: As a result of the above, we might see an un-ironic return to the 'learn to code' mantra in the following years. Perhaps now qualified 'learn to -actually- code'? I'd wager a dollar on that discourse popping up in ~5 years time if the trend of not hiring junior devs continues.

The plan seems to be to hope that AI will be able to replace the senior ICs in the near future. They're certainly gutting the ranks of management today in a way that presupposes there will be far fewer ICs of all levels to manage soon.

That's much longer than a quarterly earnings report away, which makes it "somebody else's problem" for the executives pushing these policies. There's no reason to expect these people to have a long-term strategy in mind as long as their short-term strategy gives them a golden parachute.

presumably this also means the relative value of seniors is now increasing, as the pipeline to replace them is smaller.

its like how the generic "we take anyone" online security degree has poisoned that market -- nothing but hoards of entry level goobers, but no real heavy hitters on the mid-to-high end. put another way, the market is tight but there are still reasonable options for seniors.

then again we live under capitalism

That’s a problem years away, so… don’t think about it?

Job market is not obligated to ensure sustained supply of talented individuals, so, I think, short term they'd just keep chasing unicorns. Long term, governments will be forced to financially incentivize young hires. Or something terrible happens and everything rolls back to 1945.