OK, so let me get this straight: Microsoft replaces junior SWEs with AI... and this presumably doesn't really let the company execute any faster, because bottlenecks at MSFT are mostly unrelated to kLOC/hour. But okay. And then they establish a parallel program for people who are kept on Microsoft payroll... while coding in an academic setting... so that they can progress through the rungs of the SWE ladder and eventually be the ones supervising the AI.

This is really what we're doing? This makes sense? Am I taking crazy pills?

It makes perfect sense when you accept that the LLM hype was mostly delusional. Nobody invested in that lie can admit it just yet because there's still some juice left. Never mind all the "I told you so"s ever since 2022 market dip.

This guy has been sitting in cash for 4 years.

The bigger issue is that undergrad students learning in the era of AI is really a terrible environment for actually learning the fundamental theory that gives someone a long and productive career. And the workplace has never been a good place to learn that stuff. The talent pipeline from colleges has always been a steady trickle despite eras when signups into computer science was a flood. With AI, that trickle has become a scant drip.

Yes, I believe programs like this aim to address this issue too. The traditional ways of learning might no longer be sufficient or reliable enough to produce appropriately skilled workers in the era of AI. Maybe something like this program or other apprenticeship programs would bridge that gap by focusing on juniors who are truly interested in the field.

The traditional pedagogy still works for those students who could be disciplined enough to not use AI on problem sets and projects. But that's not a realistic expectation. You can learn how to use AI on the job. It is very rare someone gains the baseline knowledge of algorithms on the job.

Programs are swapping capstone projects and courses for comprehensive oral examinations and that's partly from input from industry that there's been a skill drop. But that feels like a panic stopgap and we really are going to struggle with this for a while.

Yes, that dynamic is essentially what this is proposing to solve. Microsoft is acknowledging that junior engineers will be less in demand due to AI (and presumably it is experiencing that itself) because economics, i.e. when supervised by senior engineers, AI is way cheaper and faster than junior engineers.

These economics would choke off the pipeline that turns junior engineers into senior engineers, which would still presumably needed to supervise the AI.

I don't see the irrationality here?

And yes, bottlenecks at MSFT (or any large corporation) are unrelated to kLOC/hour, which I would argue are primarily because of human factors... which also AI threatens to obviate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50121996

> I don't see the irrationality here?

You're replacing juniors with AI to save money (because again, I doubt there are velocity gains to be had at MSFT), and then you're spending money to keep junior SWEs on payroll and train them in a parallel program.

There's no way this is cheaper than just letting some junior SWEs actually do the coding on the actual projects you're building, right? And gain experience that way?