Does your company still hire juniors, or is it now focusing only on seniors (because of AI)?
When I was in Munich during the summer, the founder of the minimalist phone app was interviewed for a podcast, he mentioned that the entire team consists of only senior people (he also added that he checks the outputs after AI, because he doesn't trust it 100%).
The point is – I also see fewer junior positions in companies' career search engines.
Have you given up on entry-level positions too?
How do you perceive the changing job market after the advent and adoption of AI?
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I build solo, so I am not hiring, but I work with AI every day and the part it cannot do for me is exactly what the founder in that podcast described: checking the output. That skill comes from having been burned, a migration that went wrong, a test that passed for the wrong reason. My worry is that if nobody hires juniors, nobody gets burned in a safe place, and in ten years there are no seniors left to check anything. The juniors I would hire today are the ones who can read code they did not write and say why it is wrong. That used to be the second year skill, now it is the first one.
@gbasovv there will be a huge gap between senior people who know how to use AI and those juniors waiting for miracle. The easiest way for junior is to start building own startup. now.
@gbasovv @busmark_w_nika True, you learn a lot by starting your own thing. But building it yourself as a junior doesn’t remove the need for a senior, it just moves it onto you. At some point you still need someone experienced to look over what you’ve made, especially the code, because security bugs are exactly the kind of thing you don’t know to look for until someone points them out. Starting early is worth it, but it doesn’t skip that part.
@busmark_w_nika @alieksia Agreed, and security is the clearest case. My previous app let the client write its own purchase counters straight into the database, the kind of hole you do not know to look for until someone shows you. The rewrite turned it into a rule: credits are written only by the server, and the database rules refuse anything else from the app. Nothing about that is hard to build, it is just hard to think of alone.
@gbasovv @alieksia I am thinking whether people will seek the experienced feedback in AI or people in forums.
@busmark_w_nika Building your own thing is the fastest teacher I know, because the bugs are yours and nobody else will fix them. The one thing a solo project does not give you is a person who says no. So a junior going that way should borrow one: ship something small to real users, put the code in public, and ask someone more experienced to tear one piece of it apart. One honest review a month is worth more than a year of shipping alone.
@gbasovv Exactly. I’d hire a junior and give them that chance. Someone eager who’s good with AI can be really valuable now, maybe more than before, not less. I’d take motivation over a polished CV any day, and you grow alongside them too.
I know lots of juniors and mid-level people who just can't find any job...
Today, the truth is that it's easier to jump to senior in one big step.
AI is changing the whole path =}
@adana I agree with you Adana on the 'easier to jump to senior in one big step'. I think a junior who can use AI and other tools extremely well is incredibly useful. Spotting digital innovations and new tools is something I see as often being overlooked in the junior vs senior conversation.
@a_s71 Yes.. Agreed
@adana Yesterday, I read this: Probably even senior people have problems to find job.
@busmark_w_nika This is the era of not junior, not senior…
It’s the era of people with a creative mind, problem-solving skills, leadership, and the ability to act alone and figure things out.
Maybe that’s why there are fewer and fewer vacancies for “regular” workers - even senior ones.
@adana I think that not everybody is an entrepreneur, and there will still be a need for a very few people to help in the businesses (otherwise, if everyone were a founder, nobody would be a customer because we all would have been self-sufficient).
@busmark_w_nika Yes, of course. But companies still need people with strong skills and a personal approach today.
This is some kind of earthquake, and I think everything will find its balance soon.
no juniors today -> no senior engineers tomorrow.
@angsak6 Some people will be able to climb the ladder on their own using their own projects.
@busmark_w_nika True but it will exponentially harder to hire good engineers. there will be a drastic split between engineering quality.
The issue is if we dont hire juniors then we will eventually run out of seniors.
I would rather hire a junior and be able to mold them that to have a senior person who is stuck in their ways. Adaptability is so important now.
@naw103 but how many companies do have that mindset to raise seniors? That's a big deal nowadays.