I don’t think what you are thinking of would happen because we’ll just redefine what a “junior” is.
In some industries you see education inflation- apprenticeships may be declining, but you can get a 2 year degree in auto repair at my community college. Similarly, you used to be able to become a lawyer through apprenticeship and self study, so a “junior” in the profession was the apprentice. Lawyers now enter the profession after 3 years of law school, so the bar for what a “junior” lawyer does and is has changed.
More significantly, you’ll see what is expected of a junior developer (and developers in general) change. My understanding is that prior to personal computers and spreadsheets accountants spent an enormous amount of time doing arithmetic. Presumably, junior accountants were expected to do a lot more of the arithmetic than the senior accountants. The invention of the digital spreadsheet eliminated a lot out of this work, but accountancy (and junior accountants) ended up evolving to deliver ever more insights about how a business operates and now there are more accountants than ever.
As a principal software engineer, I have far more problems to solve than I have time or available resources. If a new grad can solve those problems I’ll happily let them do so. There are precious few problems I have that an LLM can largely solve on its own and where that is true the new grad is often better at utilizing an LLM than I am.
I’ll add that these changes place different values on different skills and we are at a transitional moment. I imagine that the junior accountant with incredible arithmetic skills but no interest in computers or saw their career prospects dim with invention of the spreadsheet.
Good points, thank you. I wonder what the requirements and expectations towards newly graduated devs will be like once (or if at all) the industry stabilizes with these new tools. Will they just be expected to stick spaghetti to the wall faster than before, or will the surplus of quantity (of code) lead to an improved appreciation for quality and basics
In some industries you see education inflation- apprenticeships may be declining, but you can get a 2 year degree in auto repair at my community college. Similarly, you used to be able to become a lawyer through apprenticeship and self study, so a “junior” in the profession was the apprentice. Lawyers now enter the profession after 3 years of law school, so the bar for what a “junior” lawyer does and is has changed.
More significantly, you’ll see what is expected of a junior developer (and developers in general) change. My understanding is that prior to personal computers and spreadsheets accountants spent an enormous amount of time doing arithmetic. Presumably, junior accountants were expected to do a lot more of the arithmetic than the senior accountants. The invention of the digital spreadsheet eliminated a lot out of this work, but accountancy (and junior accountants) ended up evolving to deliver ever more insights about how a business operates and now there are more accountants than ever.
As a principal software engineer, I have far more problems to solve than I have time or available resources. If a new grad can solve those problems I’ll happily let them do so. There are precious few problems I have that an LLM can largely solve on its own and where that is true the new grad is often better at utilizing an LLM than I am.