AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly Make Seniors Stronger?

Re:AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly... by cmiles74 on Sunday September 21, 2025 @11:53AM (#45323808)

I can see how this workflow made the senior developer faster. At the same time, work mentoring the AI strikes me as less valuable then the same time spent mentoring a junior developer. If this ends up encouraging an ever widening gap between the skill levels of juniors and seniors, I think that would be bad for the field, overall.

Getting that kind of data is difficult, right now it's just something I worry about.

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Re:AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly... by square_usual on Sunday September 21, 2025 @12:13PM (#45323981)

> work mentoring the AI strikes me as less valuable then the same time spent mentoring a junior developer

But where can you just "mentor" a junior? Hiring people is not so easy, especially not ones that are worth mentoring. Not every junior will be a willing, good recipient of mentoring, and that's if you manage to get one, given budget constraints and long lead times on hiring. And at best you end up with one or two; with parallel LLMs, you can have almost entire teams of people working for you.

I'm not arguing for replacing juniors - I worry about the same thing you do - but I can see why companies are so eager to use AI, especially smaller startups that don't have the budgets and manpower to hire people.

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Re:AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly... by AdrianB1 on Sunday September 21, 2025 @12:26PM (#45324136)

If a junior is not willing to learn and grow, there is no future for that person in the organization. "Forever junior" is not a valid job title. Better not hire someone that is not good enough than having to deal with the consequences, I learned from my past mistakes.

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Re:AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly... by square_usual on Sunday September 21, 2025 @12:46PM (#45324382)

Of course, and that's why it's not a simple choice between using AI and hiring a junior. Hiring and mentoring a junior is a lot more work for an uncertain payoff.

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Re:AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly... by sosborn on Sunday September 21, 2025 @12:13PM (#45323987)

It's a classic short-term gain outlook for these companies.

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Re:AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly... by AdrianB1 on Sunday September 21, 2025 @12:24PM (#45324109)

I would spend time mentoring a junior, but I don't have one so I work with AI. It was the company's decision, but when they asked me "who can continue developing and supporting system X" the answer is "the nobody that you provided". When you cut corners on growing juniors, you reap what you sow.

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Re:AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly... by bentt on Sunday September 21, 2025 @12:30PM (#45324189)

I don't think it replaces a junior, but it raises the bar for the potential that a a junior would need to show early, for exactly the reason you mention. A junior will now need to be a potential senior.

The juniors that are in trouble are the low-potential workhorse folks who really aren't motivated but happened to get skilled up in a workshop or technical school. They hopped on the coding wagon as a lucrative career change, not because they loved it.

Those folks are in trouble and should move on to the next trend... which ironically is probably saying you can wrangle AI.

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Re:AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly... by dotancohen on Sunday September 21, 2025 @12:55PM (#45324476)

The junior could use the LLM as a crutch to learn what to learn. Whatever output the LLM gave them, they could examine or ask the LLM to explain. Don't put into production anything you don't understand.

Though I'm extremely well versed in Python, I'm right now writing a Python Qt application with Claude. Every single Qt function or object that I use, I read the documentation for.

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