> “The unfortunate thing right now, specifically for recent college grads, is those positions that are most likely to be automated are the entry-level positions that they would be seeking,” said Matthew Martin, U.S. senior economist at Oxford Economics, a forecasting firm.
This matches my experience. About 90% of the coding tasks I would have assigned to a junior in years past, I can get done for a fraction of the price at a similar quality and in 1/3rd the time by a tool like Claude Code. The only reason I have to hire a junior would be to develop them into a senior over 3-5 years, and companies are far too shortsided to think about that training pipeline.
A good senior engineer still does things the tools can't- in particular, non-programming tasks like planning, persuading, and accountability. I fear that there will be a crisis in these skills as the current seniors retire/change industries in the coming years.
This matches my experience. About 90% of the coding tasks I would have assigned to a junior in years past, I can get done for a fraction of the price at a similar quality and in 1/3rd the time by a tool like Claude Code. The only reason I have to hire a junior would be to develop them into a senior over 3-5 years, and companies are far too shortsided to think about that training pipeline.
A good senior engineer still does things the tools can't- in particular, non-programming tasks like planning, persuading, and accountability. I fear that there will be a crisis in these skills as the current seniors retire/change industries in the coming years.