While AI is mostly useless, I found many junior developers even more so.

It's like education system and incentive structure gave up on people.

It's not their fault there is no point in pursuing knowledge, if they know there will be no reward.

And why would you want to work hard for a corporation that believes they shouldn't contribute to society by means of taxes and being decent.

> And why would you want to work hard for a corporation that believes they shouldn't contribute to society by means of taxes and being decent.

Or would lay you off in a nanosecond if they thought it would make the shareholders happier, no matter how well you did your job.

> It's like education system and incentive structure gave up on people.

Actually I don't think I've ever met a decent developer who was a result of any sort of education or degree system.

All of them were blokes that were really interested in computers and learned in spite of the education system.

I was told I didn't need Computers 101 because of my scores. Then I was told the very last semester "you need Computers 101, no exceptions" and swear to god, the instructor[1] thought barcodes were magnetic, mice had inertial navigation systems to sense movement/position, disk files were simply images of punch cards, and other such idiocies. She would have been perfect AI fodder.

[1] sure as hell not calling her a professor or teacher

True, but even a bad education system used to at least spark self-driven learning. You’d sit there thinking ‘I can do better than this,’ and that frustration would push you to explore on your own. Now it’s so hollow and sanitised that it doesn’t even provoke curiosity - just apathy.

If by "efficiency gains" you mean "cutting the wage bill".

I think that 5-10 years from now, the companies using AI to replace recruitment are going to find that their 2nd line techies have advanced their careers out of those posts but people who have the required experience to replace them will be in very short supply. Short-term thinking is short-sighted thinking.

They may well find in 5-10 years that AI has advanced sufficiently to deliver 2nd line roles

Let us first see if AI can actually do the first line roles entirely on their own for the next couple of yeras (let alone 5 to 10), without eating up *all* the time of the current second liners cleaning up after them - and whilst still remaining affordable, now that [1]prices are starting to become more realistic .

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/15/augment_pricing_model/

"They may well find in 5-10 years that AI has advanced sufficiently to deliver 2nd line roles"

That was the spirit behind the decline of the UK as a world power after WWII.

The problem of this policy is that it might not work that way. And even if it works out, you are now short of people to do the 3rd line roles.

Brilliant economic thinking.

Note that the current industrial power houses in East Asia and Europe (ie, Germany) did the opposite: Invest in education, trainees, and traineeships

As a world power? Largely a function of us being as poor as church mice and with imperial commitments we couldn't possibly meet (witness our rapid scarper from the Indian subcontinent).

Decline as a European power? Far slower, but a function first of refusing to recognise the above reality, and secondly as you say: a lack of investment in training, skills and new ways of working. And specifically a concentration on elite education at the expense of a broad technical education.

And then finally, and I hesitate to mention it, deep ambivalence about engagement with those countries that most closely resemble ourselves and sit on our doorstep. Everything from the will-we/won't-we Common Market membership to the snake oil of Brexit.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The ignorant snot-nosed pimply-faced kid today is the hardened, experienced admin of next year that can get stuff done quickly and correctly.

On the other hand, in 10 years, IT jobs will have to pay really well because there will be very few people willing/experienced/qualified.

When I was starting out, the engineers I met owned detached houses with driveways and gardens. Their partners could focus on their own goals, and they had time to tinker, read, and stay curious.

Now, the senior engineers I meet rent cramped flats, often sharing them well into their late 30s or 40s. Their mental bandwidth is consumed by rent, bills, and endlessly optimising the scraps they manage to save. Desk lunch breaks are spent on Trading 212 or budgeting apps, not learning or experimenting. They’re too burned out to keep up with their own field - running just to stay still. What used to be a stable, respected profession has turned into a slow, grinding survival exercise.

But then you watch board member pulls up in new Porsche and you can think to yourself: "It was all worth it!".

Part of this has been self-inflicted. The war of wages within FAANG, and to a slightly lesser extent in other tech hotspots such as London, has resulted in completely unrealistic starting salaries as you now can't afford to live anywhere close to work on an old skool grad wage.

Add to that the fact that most tech companies have some form of VC or PE backing propping them up resulting in profit being the biggest driver of any business decision.

I've seen CVs for people still wet behind the ears wanting bonkers money. They go straight in the bin. I've seen the results of people kicking up a fuss for a promotion and hefty pay rise. One ended up first up against the wall when the corporate overlords complained about costs and the other sold his soul by agreeing that he would not get a bonus or pay rise for 2 years as part of the deal and then we had our best year in a very long time and everyone else got a nice big bonus and pay rise which was worth more in the long term.

"there will be very few people willing/experienced/qualified."

There will be, but somewhere else where they continued to hire PFYs.

By then, the work will have moved to these places. Just as it did for the same reason with all industrial and engineering work before that.

"There will be, but somewhere else where they continued to hire "interview" PFYs, giving them in-house projects masquerading as "homework" which enables the company to get work done for free."

FIFY

"but somewhere else where they continued to "interview" PFYs,"

But that is not how things work in, eg, Taiwan, where they produce almost all of the complex chips. They hire droves of engineers. Their salaries are lower than in the US or UK, but higher than for their compatriots.

But they are really hiring.

Which means that trying to compete with Taiwan or China on their own terms, and wages, is not something US laborers would want. But this is exactly what MAGA is planning to do.

But wages are not everything. Wages in Europe are way lower than in the US, but cost of living is too. I have visited the US multiple times and it was utterly clear that my way of life in Europe was out of reach in the US even with double (or triple) my salary in dollars.

... the branch they're sitting on.

Oh how they'll weep and complain when the 'experience' has all retired and, strangely, there are none to replace them.

But, children, this is what happens when 'money' is made more important than 'people'.

"this is what happens when 'money' is made more important than 'people'."

Yes, and your point being?

I am not privy to the thoughts of the OP, but I have a parallel thought process.

When your society gives all the power to the "purses" and nothing to the "hands", the purses will fill up while the hands go empty.

The filled purses will then leave for greener pastures, while the empty hands have to stay on the now barren soil.

Which, in 2 lines, is post-WWII history in the UK, USA, and many other Free Market countries.

There were, however, societies where the "purses" and the "hands" had to share the spoils in ways that kept the pastures green for both the purses and the hands.

These more equitable society are seeing the filled purses of old slowly draining into their own green pastures, that is, their hands and purses. [1]

Which is in another 2 lines the post-WWII industrial and political history of East-Asia

[1] Enshitification theory predicts that the cycle will repeat with the new powerhouses repeating the mistakes as the old ones.

The cynical part of me suspects that *some* companies are currently in financial distress, and that the claim "we're moving everything over to AI" is largely a smokescreen to cover the fact they can't afford to recruit, or even maintain their current workforce. The cost of doing business and of employing productive workers has rocketed over the last five years and weary business owners are watching the budget predictions and expecting worse to come.

So IT departments are being asked to do without, or cut back - and senior management are more than happy to say they can cover the work load with AI that they haven't seriously tried beyond conversations with ChatGPT(*). This is like laying off half of your department and telling the other half they'll have to pick up the slack.

(*) The conversation goes like this:

CEO: "Hey chatgtp, can you run a multi-million pound company?"

ChatGPT: "Sure, I can help you with that. Do you want a five point plan to follow?"

CEO: "Yes, but can you say it in the voice of a hot Italian woman?"

There's also that the so-called disruptive entrants, who tend to be tech-heavy, haven't had the time to develop the cultural memory of the consequences when mistakes are made. So they naturally conflate the value of an AI that's right or useful only some of the time with a human who could be right a lot more of the time and of course opt for the cheaper version.

Actually, it is really that bad.

[1]Nearly all US growth in 2025 tied to AI and data center-related capital spending

Big tech data center spending nears $400 billion after fourfold surge

Recent analysis by Harvard economist Jason Furman found that excluding spending on technology-related infrastructure, annualized GDP growth in the first half of 2025 [2]would have been just 0.1 percent – underscoring the extraordinary influence of digital infrastructure investment on overall economic performance.

That is how MAGA tries to MAGA: Blowing big shiny bubbles!

And, of course, [3]Crypto coins .

[1] https://www.techspot.com/news/109794-tech-investments-lift-us-gdp-amid-broader-economic.html

[2] https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/data-centers-gdp-growth-zero-first-half-2025-jason-furman-harvard-economist/

[3] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/official-trump/

"underscoring the extraordinary influence of digital infrastructure investment on overall economic performance"

Well, that quote should be "on measured performance". Politicians have long since lost any finger on the pulse of society, and rather than find out what people think, what they are experiencing, what they want from government, they chase arbitrary goals such as measured GDP, which unfortunately doesn't measure what normal people experience. In the US "growth" is that big measured contribution to GDP because businesses are investing in AI tulips, in the UK it's money thrown at net zero, but in both cases that spending crowds out investment in real world businesses with viable investment cases, and it doesn't have any worthwhile trickle down to the rest of the economy.

There are a lot of claims of AIs that will build the app of your dreams by just thinking about it, no code required. If your dreams are simple, or largely a copy of something already out there, then sure. Otherwise, your mileage may vary (i.e. it's unlikely).

This leads to a lot of non-IT types feeling that it would be better to use AI instead of hiring juniors.

In some roles, there is a lot of routine work that can be handed over, and that may be able to be replaced (at least in part) by AI. It can make senior developers more productive.

However, juniors in all areas are slower, more error-prone, etc. It's a necessary part of learning. If you try to remove the entry level, then at some point you'll struggle to get the more experienced staff, too, as they become more scarce.

It's a short-term view, because investing in juniors is generally something more of a medium to long term investment. They're rarely going to 'hit the ground running'. They need nurturing. What you aim to end up with is cost-effective experienced staff over time. That's true in IT just as much as in other sectors.

In five years this is gonna be both hilarious and sad.