But my belief is those companies will soon realize that some of the people who they thought were junior are pretty adept at AI management - more adept than the senior people. And that skill will suddenly be more in demand than how well you can code an optimized sorting algorithm.
Some will get there faster than others of course. But AI is changing things so quickly that it may happen faster than we think, given the state right now.
I don't mean right now, I mean going as far back as 2018 at least when I had to go through a brutal slog over many months to get my first gig as a new software dev. I eventually ended up in a midlevel role and had to grow into it (I still feel like I found a Willy Wonka golden ticket).
But it is infuriating to see people suggest that there is such a thing as junior level positions and that companies actually want to hire junior level people. That has been absolutely false for a very long time.
Yeah the joke is companies want to hire someone who is already an expert in that role who is curious and a fast learner, without realizing that if someone is already an expert who is curious and a fast learner, they probably want a different role to grow into.
I don't mean to shit on your article. I think the general gist of it is correct; what it means to be a software developer is going to radically change for all levels, not just we mere mortals without the magical word "Senior" in our titles. Being fluent in prompting and supervising AI agents are going to be more of the day to day than cranking out lines of code.
I'm just (I think justifiably) a little salty because not that long ago LEARN TO CODE!!! was the mantra for those who wanted to step up into a middle class life and now every executive and their mother is frothing at the mouth over shoehorning AI into anything and everything and pulling up what little of the career ladder exists while they're at it.
But my belief is those companies will soon realize that some of the people who they thought were junior are pretty adept at AI management - more adept than the senior people. And that skill will suddenly be more in demand than how well you can code an optimized sorting algorithm.
Some will get there faster than others of course. But AI is changing things so quickly that it may happen faster than we think, given the state right now.