Entry-level software engineering postings dropped 67% between 2023 and 2024. The pipeline that turns students into engineers is collapsing.

AI coding tools are replacing entry-level programming jobs faster than anyone predicted. The traditional path from junior to senior developer is collapsing, and the consequences for the entire industry could be devastating. If you mentor juniors or hire them, this one hits different.

  • Mikina@programming.dev
    26·
    6 hours ago

    Tbh from my experiences, AI is also turning current senior devs into juniors. The skill erosion is real, and I could see it on myself just after a week of trying out Claude (since we’ve gotten access at my job).

    The skills I’ve spent a great part of my life acquiring are really not worth whatever advantages AI use may have, even if I just did my job to earn a paycheck and didn’t care about the quality of my output, as long as it’s acceptable. It may feel easier now, but eventually you will have to pass another interview, and good luck when the last time you actually coded without AI was a year ago.

    • lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de
      8·
      2 hours ago

      The skill erosion is real, and I could see it on myself just after a week of trying out Claude

      While it took me a few months to really notice it, that still shocked me. Using AI extensively makes you depend on it - and that’s exactly what the big players want. A customer paying a recurring subscription just to do their job.

      Since I am not forced to use it, I deleted my OpenAI account and started to code without LLM assistance again. It’s much more fun to solve problems by myself (and get a dopamine kick out of that) anyway - and when the bubble inevitably pops, I can still go on as I did before.

    • mspencer712@programming.dev
      7·
      3 hours ago

      I’m with you, stuck at a billion dollar software company with an AI fetish. It’s a great search tool, can write some decent unit tests. But God help you if you let it write production code, for any of the “you won’t find this on stackexchange” stuff we all work on.

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
      5·
      5 hours ago

      If you believe the AI hype there won’t be any programming jobs soon - so those that do (believe) think they need to become highly-proficient AI-wranglers to maintain employability.

      I too think it’s the wrong approach, but it’s hard to say what hirers will be looking for in the medium to long term, and devs whom adapt to ‘the new thing’ faster have typically been more hirable.

      Personally hoping the big players crash and burn asap because the benefits just haven’t been anywhere near worth the costs across various domains.

      • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
        2·
        41 minutes ago

        This isn’t anything new. There have been multiple waves of “code-gen for normies”, and every time after the hype dies down there’s a heap of shitty code to fix.

        There’s gonna be no shortage of customers up to their eyeballs in broken slop after the bill comes due and Anthropic has to stop subsidizing their prices. AI slop is the best thing to happen to our job security in a while. (Provided you retain your critical thinking skills.)