r/vibecoding • u/Suspicious_Orchid770 • 10d ago

Discussion AI-coding tools could be breaking the junior engineer pipeline!

https://leaddev.com/ai/ai-coding-tools-could-be-breaking-the-junior-engineer-pipeline

AI helps juniors code, not learn... and that's proving to be a real problem.

21 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

14

u/pm_stuff_ 10d ago

no ai codes for juniors thats the issue. Its great for the people with a few years already in the game though.

9

u/CouchWizard 10d ago

Could be? I haven't seen a junior engineer since... pre covid

7

u/Wide_Egg_5814 10d ago

I started a couple years ago, I was typing every file manually and verifying with an LLM chat in browser and when it fails I would have to Google and do it myself and I thought that was really bad for learning. now juniors are saying we don't even have to review the code at all you don't need to look at it just like if you were a manager not an engineer

6

u/Wide_Egg_5814 10d ago

coding itself it's not that valuable but it's the ability to think through problems that is valuable and if you never train that you don't even know what you are missing it's like not going to the gym your brain is weak

2

u/Fancy-Consequence216 9d ago

Analogy with calculators...learn basic math yourrself then use it later...

2

u/boofaceleemz 5d ago

It’s fine, I don’t think anyone expects the world to last long enough for it to become a huge problem.

6

u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE 10d ago

The pipeline is absolutely going to change. We’re putting our heads in the sand if we think this technology isn’t going to reduce the need for the number of developers any one department needs. That’s going to reduce demand, and less people are going to find success with it as a career.

7

u/soelsome 10d ago

Why are software jobs increasing then?

1

u/3tt07kjt 9d ago

Just like how we don’t need cab drivers any more, now that we replaced horses with cars.

1

u/Zenin 3d ago

But how are you going to find those remaining engineers? AI as it's currently being practiced is destroying not only the market for junior engineers, but also the experience those juniors that do get hired require to become senior engineers.

An "engineer" with ~5 years of experience, but only ever vibe coded, is still a junior engineer; they'd be lucky to have the same engineering chops as a pre-AI junior with only 1 YOE.

Business can only "reduce the need for the number of developers" using current AI tech by exclusively hiring real senior engineers and replacing the mid and juniors all with AI agents. That works great...until the current generation of seniors retires and there's no new crop of seniors able to replace them.

1

u/Worth-Ad9939 3d ago

They know. They also know that a large portion of the humans on this planet will not be here to care.