It seems that junior developers hiring is way down from where it used to be based on articles like this one, for example: https://byteiota.com/developer-hiring-crisis-2026-40-worse-junior-drops-73/
That’s attributed to the rise of AI-assisted development, and I guess that makes sense.
Of course the problem that is often mentioned in the context of these stats is that, without the juniors, we will eventually run out of seniors.
I think that’s simply not correct. At the very least, it’s based on some assumptions which may not hold.
Don’t get me wrong, just like everybody else I am very concerned about my own job security, my kids’ job security, my wife’s job security, my colleagues’ and friends’ job security, etc. That’s not what I’m talking about, though. Let’s put all those emotions aside for a moment.
The main assumption behind this thinking is that AI-assisted coding will stop improving and the nature of software development work will stay the same. It also depends on the time horizon you’re considering.
As in:
- AI-assisted coding will likely continue to improve. Which means AI won’t only be taking away more junior jobs, it will also be eating into the senior developers’ share of the job market. Altogether, it just means there will be fewer developers needed (both in junior and senior roles)
- This all does not have to happen tomorrow. It can take years – after all, senior developers are not going to retire suddenly, yet any junior developer hired today would not turn into a senior dev tomorrow either way
- If (of course it’s still an “if”) AI improves to the point where it can reliably do development on its own with only occasional oversight required from the humans, what’s even the purpose of getting a person through that whole junior-senior developer progression? It’s very likely humans won’t need to bother about software development in the long term, at least not in the way we are accustomed to (I know, that would require a complete revamp of the current software development field, but what if you thought of the next 10-20 years, not “tomorrow”?)
With all that said, the reason I gave this post a bit of a cheeky title is not that I, somehow, have anything against the junior developers. It’s really just about framing this differently. We tend to think “those companies are not hiring junior developers, and they will suffer in the long term”. But will they? It’s possible they won’t, it all depends on what happens to the AI in the same “long term”. So, in a way, for those companies “less junior developers” means exactly that: “less problems”. For the junior developers and fresh graduates, that can still be a huge problem, of course.
Now, if you wanted to call me out tomorrow and say “see, I told you, there are not enough junior developers to replace our senior staff”, I’d say “wait a second, you had enough yesterday, but, today, it’s not enough?”. Point being, we are not talking about “tomorrow”, we are talking about “years from now”. Do you remember how bad AI-assisted coding was 3 years ago? Can you reliably imagine where it’s going to be 3 years from now?
And this has nothing to do with the job security. It’s all about where things stand. As for the job security, that’s a different topic, it’s dear to my heart, but, I don’t think it’s going to be solved by having unjustified assumptions.