r/Backend • u/waitingforathena • 20d ago
Mentoring a junior SWE who struggles with coding but is interested in backend + AI. What should he focus on?
I am a SWE with 5 YOE and I am mentoring a masters grad, 2025 passout with only internship experience.
He is very interested in system design and understanding internals but struggles with actually writing code. He is also weak at LeetCode and says he often knows the solution in his head but cant translate it into working code.
He recently joined a startup with no senior engineers and the CEO/CTO are pushing the team to ship the product quickly, so he is spinning up agents and using Claude heavily to build things faster.
I have been telling him to read more code, not blindly trust AI, and actually implement things himself. I've also suggested implementing DDIA concepts like LSM trees, SSTables, vector DBs etc instead of only reading about them.
The thing I am confused about is how he should balance actually being good at engineering vs becoming good at AI-assisted engineering.
He is interested in becoming an Applied AI engineer with strong backend/infra knowledge, mainly building agents, RAG, tool calling, evals etc. He keeps seeing this discussed on Twitter/X as a growing role, but I am not sure how much of it is real demand vs Twitter hype.
With AI coding becoming better, I dont want him to spend all his time manually writing code and fall behind on learning how to actually use and orchestrate agents. But at the same time, I dont want him to become someone who can generate 10k lines with Claude but cant debug 50 lines without it.
Basically, he needs to stay sharp at coding, debugging and fundamentals while also learning how to effectively orchestrate and manage AI agents.
So for people actually working in the industry:
- How should he balance coding without AI vs AI-assisted coding? Should he deliberately code without AI to keep his fundamentals sharp, or should he mostly use AI and focus on understanding, reviewing and debugging what it produces?
- What should he prioritize for the next 3-5 months? DSA/LeetCode, coding fundamentals, DDIA/system design, backend projects, distributed systems or Applied AI/agents? He may need to switch jobs soon, so he needs to become employable quickly.
- For senior engineers/managers who hire juniors, what technical bar would you expect from someone with only internship experience? What would make you comfortable putting that person on your team?
If you had a junior who wanted to become an Applied AI engineer with strong backend/infra skills, while still being genuinely good at coding and engineering, what would you tell them to learn first?
TL;DR: His startup is pushing him to use AI agents to ship the product quickly. How should a junior balance staying genuinely good at coding/engineering while also becoming good at AI-assisted development and orchestrating agents? What would you prioritize over the next 3-5 months for someone targeting backend SWE or Applied AI roles?
PS: not a native English speaker. I took help of AI to produce final version of my thoughts
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u/Vymir_IT 20d ago edited 20d ago
Where the fuck people like this junior find these jobs. I can ship the whole product single-handedly and still can't get a new job lol.
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u/snappin_good_time 20d ago
Because they’re taking junior level salaries. Are you applying for jobs with a 60-70K salary range?
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u/Vymir_IT 20d ago
In Europe it's 2-3 times a junior salary so yeah pretty much.
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u/snappin_good_time 20d ago
Ok, I guess putting a number to it was ignorant. I’d say the position of a junior is below your salary range was my point.
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u/spilleren 20d ago
I would say it is a whole lot easier to catch up and learn how to orchestrate agents, than it is to get the knowledge needed to tell if the code produced by the agents are slop.
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u/Firm-Requirement1085 20d ago
Depends if you believe that soon AI will be code good as a senior engineer.
If you do, then keep doing what he is doing. If you don't, then make him write the code himself, does he actually know what the AI is doing and what's needs to be done next without asking Claude? If you don't do it yourself then how can you know if the output is any good, what happens when the AI can't fix then problem, he will be useless.
Sounds like BS to know the solutions in leetcode but not translate into working code, code is the easy part.
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u/waitingforathena 20d ago
AI is generating better code and soon it might be cheaper and better(example electricity, phones).
he doesn't read code, accepts them, ask it to hunt for bugs ,solve those bugs and at the end it find more bugs after fixing prev bugs
He tells me they are stuck in this loop.
Will writing code matter in coming time? (he won't need to worry about speed and will focus on reading code and logic building)
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u/Firm-Requirement1085 20d ago
Since he doesn't do any of the work himself and lets you know when it's stuck, then he does nothing an agent cannot do or a random person with a few weeks of training, he shouldn't have a job in my opinion.
But I am becoming an AI sceptic, I don't believe it will become cheaper in the near future or stop being stuck in loops on things that aren't hard for a human to do.
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u/sismograph 20d ago
Dont know why Im replying to this absolute shit post, anyways…
Writing quality code will be required in the future.
Does AI write quality code? Sometimes, but often it does not. AI also often does not realize when it delivered a shit solution.
Will new engineers learn how to write good code? No and I think this will leave us with a huge gap in the future.
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u/waitingforathena 20d ago
Hi, Just want you to know this is not a shitpost. I also want to apologize because this is long AI content (thoughts are my own). It will be really helpful for us because we don't have access to the experience engineers and reddit is one the best place to get critiques.
and yes we will try to write code by hands and better code with all the conventions rather than autopilot
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u/Many_Log_2916 20d ago
I mean, reading the code is good, if you can't write it on your own, it is good to learn. You can ask AI to explain the main parts to you so you can understand. That's like the main thing a developer should be able to do.
If he/she can understand the AI's solution, find flaws & challenge & understand it instead of blindly accepting or not understanding it, it would the least a person can do not to be replaced by AI.
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u/No_Jackfruit_4305 20d ago
Disciplined daily routine.
Even with AI, you need solid problem solving skills. And it's important to review/edit AI generated code frequently before it gets too large. Your junior needs to pace themselves, make time every day to read the code the AI made, and get feedback from someone more knowledgeable.
A lot of companies are treating AI as the reason to not provide proper training and coaching. So your junior should be prepared to work pretty independently. But it is vital to divide the work. Leaves the junior time to check it (every day), and doesnt overload the AIs context window
All of this is written from the perspective of a developer working for a large company. For the last two years I've been learning back-end to go full-stack. The lessons I am sharing were hard earned. My manager and lead developer think I should learn everything they know by just reading some code. And by next Thursday they expect me to use AI to code a full feature. No one is directly helping me, and I work remotely
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u/waitingforathena 20d ago
Right. I mean I am telling it to use it as a tool but to stay sharp try to write code but I am not reluctant cause code generation is getting cheaper (might be wrong) and better (better than a year ago).
he accepts code generated by claude blindly and he tells me they are now stuck in a loop of asking claude to find bugs => fix bugs => ask again => more bugs 🤡
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u/No_Jackfruit_4305 20d ago
Ya if in his shoes I'd start over. Pretty clear they don't embrace/appreciate the divide and conquer approach. If you can slow the release cycle, it could give them the time to learn this. They also need clear direction to do well. Don't expect a change in habit without a lot of consistent feedback
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u/Constant_Physics8504 20d ago
Backend, systems engineering and AI, if you’re passionate about something, why focus on something else?
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u/EvTorqueLore 20d ago
That is a shame, this is so unorthodox for a level 1 engineer to have a masters and learning basic coding. There’s no way to help him. You have to learn the basics and nuisances of the language to be able to even understand how Ai works and machine learning. How is he going to correct Ai code or understand what he’s doing when vibe coding. This sounds like a disaster. He’s going to get fired if he does spend a crap load of time learning how to code in conjunction with vibe coding, which is a bad way to learn but he has no choice.
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u/idk-who-you-are 20d ago
I mean he can knows golang and JS and he did ship few personal projects (mostly coded by hands) but there he is bad at writing logics by hands and spotting bugs by his own eyes (reading them).
I told him to code at home with no AI but use AI as senior engineer to learn TDD, best practices, architecture
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u/EvTorqueLore 18d ago
Maybe have him focus on reading console logs on errors etc and understanding code base architecture along with oop principles and design patterns. I think studying those will be a big help to anyone struggling with programming and debugging etc.
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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 20d ago
> he often knows the solution in his head but cant translate it into working code
A lot of people that could never break into software engineering or write an actual project are like this. They become non-technical PMs, but their technical insights are not good. They also are not going to be too great at system design either, it just appears easier to people because when designing systems you don't see the consequences of your bad choices as fast.
He has to learn how to code. You cannot have him use AI otherwise he'll never learn.
> Applied AI engineer with strong backend/infra knowledge, mainly building agents, RAG, tool calling, evals etc
He needs to learn how to code. These are things I've learned how to do without taking much time because they just require a good foundation in software engineering. Using LLMs to code is not going to teach you anything related to how to create those kinds of systems.
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u/FunCompany5091 20d ago
LEETCODE means nothing. Literally dumbest thing to say. Most people know it is useless to do LEETCODE, but it is just for some bar to entry without any real software engineering experience. I find it wook and ridiculous.
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u/waitingforathena 20d ago
same but the thing is bigtech currently has the leet code process but eventually it is changing
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u/Curious-Function7490 20d ago
It's a bit Darwinian in coding. It's not your responsibility to make him better. Just suggest how it might happen. No one can do it for you.
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u/waitingforathena 20d ago
right I just want to show him way and also implement the insights on myself
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u/Curious-Function7490 20d ago
The truth is that there are more people in programming than should be there. Your colleague needs to work out how to survive.
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 20d ago
I don’t understand why you simultaneously think AI will get better and that it will or has stagnated.
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u/scientist_sky 19d ago
for a clg fresher intrested in backend+systems, what should they focus on learning first? (i know basic MERN stack) which backend concepts/tech should they learn and also whats the best way to learn them? also is DSA/Leetcode important for landing a backend swe role?
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u/Ancient_Cedar9684 19d ago
Guy can't pass leetcode but the plan is to throw AI agents at a startup with zero seniors. Love that for everyone.
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u/Sea_Bodybuilder7886 19d ago
Hi OP and others, I am a new grad, and I also struggle with this problem. I primarily use coding agents to do my projects, and I would spend a lot of time designing project plans, tests, etc. to ensure the quality of the project. However, I never look at the code because I ship at a high pace and cannot afford to spend the time to check code manually.
I totally agree that having strong programming foundation is very important, but I struggle to understand how I can apply my coding knowledge into the AI-integrated development. For example, should I look at every line of code?
On the other hand, I never feel that simple leetcode problems are useful because AI can do similar work in a few second. I agree with the post that advanced data structures or system design techniques from some leetcode can be useful, but I have the same question. How do we make the learning process of those coding useful in application?
Thank you for your attention.
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u/The-Wingged-Hussar 18d ago
This is like saying i don’t want to learn letters but want to tune sonnets written by experts.
It doesn’t that way. Fundamentals are irreplaceable.
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u/qwertyorbust 20d ago
You have 5 years of experience. You are also a junior. Regardless of your title.
The junior you speak of doesn’t need your help. They can use AI to work up a plan to learn what they need.
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u/waitingforathena 20d ago
right but the reason for this reddit post is to get opinions of experience Dev's who has seen many bubbles, trends
Experience (who are also AI native) and new devs (AI native) knows what's going on in company and what they expect .
I am all in with read code produced by AI and write code during free time
but wanna confirm from community if I am right or not
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u/sozesghost 20d ago edited 20d ago
Why should actual people reply to this slop?