Are you still hiring junior/intern developers, or does AI just do it better now?
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Used to be an obvious call, hire a junior dev, let them grow into it over time, review their code, build them up.
Now with AI handling a lot of basic implementation well, curious if that math still holds.
Is anyone still bringing on interns or junior developers for entry level coding work, or has AI quietly replaced that hiring category for a lot of teams already.
Genuinely trying to understand if this is still a real starting point for someone entering the field, or if that entry point has basically disappeared.
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I still see value in junior developers because implementation is only part of the job. Learning how to reason about a codebase and work with a team matters to me too
@kimberly_west AI can handle plenty of basic coding now, but someone still needs to understand whether the generated code actually makes sense. That learning process feels important for juniors.
Interns can still bring value when the team is willing to mentor them. My concern would be companies using AI as a reason to remove the training pipeline entirely
the entry level path does seem different to me. I’d expect juniors to be evaluated more on problem solving and AI assisted development rather than just how quickly they can write boilerplate.
If you see juniors as just cheap code output, AI probably does replace them. If you see them as future seniors who learn your systems, it doesn't.