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.

  • lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de
    4·
    2 hours ago

    Unless, perhaps, AI five years from now understands that too.

    LLMs have already hit a ceiling, the improvements between new model releases are pretty much negligible. They had to come up with very expensive agents checking the output to reduce hallucinations. The best example for that is GPT-5 from OpenAI, which was extremely underwhelming.

    • Merlin@lemmy.zip
      1·
      52 minutes ago

      So. I’m a developer and I really dislike ai, am having pretty bad anxiety about the future because I’m also a bit older and I think pivoting to another career would be unlikely.

      I started using agentic ai because there has been a massive push at work, with the usual talk saying that workers who use ai will replace workers who don’t

      While I dread it and would love it to completely go away, I’ve been very surprised with the newer models like opus 4.6. The older gpt models were a bit “dumb” but opus feels different. Which makes me terrified of the future.

      I really hope they hit a wall soon and don’t get any better than that