This is also why I think we will enter a world without Jr's. The time it takes for a Senior to review the Jr's AI code is more expensive than if the Sr produced their own AI code from scratch. Factor in the lack of meetings from a Sr only team, and the productivity gains will appear to be massive.

Whether or not these productivity gains are realized is another question, but spreadsheet based decision makers are going to try.

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czscout 11 hours ago | parent [-]

In this scenario, how might one become a senior without first being a junior? Seniors just pop into existence?

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bs7280 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The business leaders do not care about this yet. I think a lot of people think we already have more Seniors than we will need in the next 5-10 years.

Also - the definition of Senior will change, and a lot of current Seniors will not transition, while plenty of Juniors that put in a lot of time using code agents will transition.

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ForHackernews 6 hours ago | parent [-]

>while plenty of Juniors that put in a lot of time using code agents will transition.

But will they? I'm not at all convinced that babysitting an AI churning out volumes of code you don't understand will help you acquire the knowledge to understand and debug it.

	▲	esafak 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Some will, some will not; hiring interviews and promotion committees will take care of the rest.

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simplyluke 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The bet from various industry leaders appears to be that the current generation of engineers will be the last who will ever need to think about complex systems and engineering, as the AI will just get good enough to do all of that by the time they retire.

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lovich 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I think it’s deeper than that because it’s affected more industries than software and already started pre AI.

American corporate culture has decided that training costs are someone else’s problem. Since every corporation acts this way it means all training costs have been pushed onto the labor market. Combine that with the past few decades of “oops, looks like you picked the wrong career that took years of learning and/or 10 to 100s of thousands of dollars to acquire but we’ve obsoleted that field” and new entrants into the labor market are just choosing not to join.

Take trucking for example. For the past decade I’ve heard logistics companies bemoan the lack of CDL holders, while simultaneously gleefully talk about how the moment self driving is figured out they are going to replace all of them.

We’re going to be outpaced by countries like China at some point because we’re doing the industrial equivalent of eating our seed corn and there is seemingly no will to slow that trend down, much less reverse it.

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bluefirebrand 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> we’re doing the industrial equivalent of eating our seed corn and there is seemingly no will to slow that trend down, much less reverse it.

I know I'm probably coming across as a lunatic lately on HN but I really do think we're on the path towards violence thanks to AI

You just cannot destroy this many people's livelihoods without backlash. It's leading nowhere good

But a handful of people are getting stupidly rich/richer so they'll never stop

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lovich 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think you're a lunatic.

If you look at the luddite rebellion they weren't actually against industrial technology like looms. They were against being told they weren't needed anymore and thrown to the wolves because of the machines.

The rich have forgotten they are made of meat and/or are planning on returning to feudalism ala Yarvin, Thiel, Musk, and co's politics.

	▲	bluefirebrand 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> They were against being told they weren't needed anymore and thrown to the wolves because of the machines. I guess that makes me a modern luddite then A software engineer luddite A techno-luddite if you will Maybe I have a new username