Yeah, I was gonna say this is not how I see this going. The copy/paste dev is replaced by the novel dev using LLM for the stuff they used to hire interns and juniors for.

In law, this sort of thing already happened with the rise of better research tools. The work L1s used to do a generation ago just does not exist now. An attorney with experience gets the results faster on their own now. With all the pipeline and QoL issues that go with that.

That makes some sense, but seems to be answering a different question of whose jobs may be in jeopardy from LLMs, as opposed to who might currently find them useful.

Note though that not all companies see it this way - the telecom I work at is hoping to replace senior onshore developers with junior offshore ones leveraging "GenAI"! I agree that the opposite makes more sense - the seniors are needed, and it's the juniors whose work may be more within reach of LLMs.

I really can't see junior developer positions wholesale disappearing though - more likely them just leveraging LLM/AI-enhanced dev tools to be more productive. Maybe in some companies where there are lots of junior developers they may (due to increased productivity) need fewer in the future, but the productivity gains to be had at this point seem questionable ... as another poster commented, the output of an LLM is only as useful as the skill of the person reviewing it for correctness.

I think we all assume each individual company will need fewer developers to do the same work they're doing now. The question is do they have fewer devs or do more work. And if it is have fewer devs, will that open up the door for more small companies to be competitive as well, since they need fewer devs and have less competition for talent from people with deep pockets.

I find a lot of the AI discussion seems to land in the "lump of labor" fallacy camp though.

I am a skeptic. What would you say would be the easiest way for me to change my mind?