The Junior Engineer You Stopped Hiring, CodeGood
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Large tech companies have cut new-graduate hiring by more than half since 2019, replacing entry-level work with AI tools. The short-term savings are real but mask a structural problem: senior engineers are produced by juniors doing junior work, and that pipeline has a 6-8 year latency. Companies eliminating junior roles are collectively defunding the supply of future seniors, creating a collective-action failure that will drive senior compensation sharply higher. A minority of firms are instead retooling the apprenticeship with AI, compressing time-to-senior from years to months and treating junior hires as counter-cyclical investments in a market their competitors are abandoning.
Table of contents
The Work That Made SeniorsThe Hiring Math That Looks IrresistibleThe Shortage You Are ManufacturingWhat the Few Are Doing DifferentlyWhat "Senior" Will Come to Mean52.3K Impressions1 Comment