AI is having a huge impact on software development. Even a year ago McKinsey did empirical research that showed AI coding tools were giving a 30-50% speed up for developers. Now, with Github Copilot being joined by tools like Cursor, aider and Zed, which push developer support from fancy auto-complete to hands-free multi-file edits, it feels like software development is about to undergo another leap in speed of execution.
As Charity Major discusses in an article on StackOverflow, this increase in developer efficiency is leading industry executives and thought leaders to believe that “generative AI is on the verge of replacing all the work done by junior engineers”.
She has about 5000 very smart words on why that’s wrong. We’re going to cover the same ground in a few hundred words and tell you what we’re doing about the situation.
The coding is the easy part
Businesses run on software. Most businesses are software. Writing that software is not the hard part about being a business made of software. The problem is complexity.
Yes, software is complex. But the real complexity is in the system that the software needs to exist in. This system isn’t limited to the boundaries of your organisation. It includes the infrastructure your software runs on, the other software it interacts with, and the pieces, the libraries, of software it is built from. The recent Crowdstrike related outage is an example of the complexity of the current system all software operates within.
Managing that complexity, and managing complexity in general, is the real skill and the real value that software developers deliver. And it takes time to learn it. Programming can be taught in a school or learned from a book. But mastering the details of the huge number of systems that are at play in the modern tech stack, where idiosyncrasies abound (because reality is imperfect and unpredictable), and unknown unknowns are numerous, takes years and requires mentorship.
As Charity Major says, this means we have to recognise that software development is an apprenticeship. Junior developers don’t become senior developers on their own. There is too much craft, too much knowledge learned through experience, too many mistakes to make, for a junior developer to master it all in a reasonable amount of time without guidance.
AI should empower junior developers, not replace them
The argument for not hiring junior developers is centred on the idea that why add to your headcount with a junior developer when you can just give a senior developer some AI coding tools.
As we wrote in our article on harnessing AI to save your business from the future:
“if your revenue per employee keeps going up as they complete work faster and do more using AI, why would you fire anyone?”
This situation is more of a “if your employees do more using AI why would you not let them do more?” situation.
If AI can help your senior developers do more senior developing – architecture, strategy, planning – why would you make your senior developers use AI to do junior developer work?
Junior developer work does involve writing code, under the direction of and with reviews by senior developers. But junior developers are also the go-to for writing test cases and refactoring code. This helps them build familiarity with your codebase and engages them with reading and understanding code written by experienced developers.
And if it is an AI coding tool that is writing the tests and refactoring the code, it should still be a junior developer driving it. The benefits are the same for the developer but the cost to you, which is accompanied by an opportunity cost, is lower. Having a senior developer generating tests instead of working on your overall system design, architecture or key features is not just throwing away money, it’s throwing away time.
Without junior developers there will be no senior developers
Every senior developer started as a junior developer. They spent the 5-7 years learning the craft of software development under more experienced programmers.
No-one has suggested that the world needs fewer senior developers. They are what every business wants to hire.
But the execs and “thought leaders” who think junior developers are moments away from being automated out of existence haven’t explained where new senior developers are going to spring from.
They are not going to be created by AI coding tools.
This image is currently making the rounds in the tech-sphere:
If you know, you know. If you don’t know, consider it a taste of the complexities of software. We like to think that Blue Bubble next took the time to explain to Grey Bubble what they were misunderstanding and gave them some paths towards being able to share their creation. A little bit of mentoring, if you will.
We’ll keep growing junior developers into senior developers
In an earlier article we wrote about Core+ teams. A Core+ team is your core in-house team at the heart of an on-demand team that changes in size and structure to meet the latest challenge.
It’s the future for lean, flexible business. And it relies on companies like SoftwareSeni cultivating and supporting a large pool of talented software developers. We’re a company of software developers focused on developing software. It’s no surprise developers like working here.
We build our pool by hiring experienced developers who want to work with us and by hiring graduates straight out of university. We invest substantial training in all of our developers because their skill and their well being is the foundation for our success.
It’s what we’ve been doing for over a decade now. We’re practised at growing junior developers into senior developers. And we’re experts at helping businesses build the optimal mix of skills in their Core+ team to suit their product, their budget, and their velocity.
And a team of all senior developers doesn’t make operational or budgetary sense. No matter how many AI-powered tools you give them.
There will always be a place for junior developers
You don’t have to be a genius to see that the idea that the days of junior developers are numbered doesn’t make sense. Not in a world that continues to grow more complicated and the skills to deal with it are quicker to teach than to discover.
And there will always be a place for junior developers at SoftwareSeni. They’re an essential part of our team and our future. They’re also an essential part of our clients’ teams and what they are able to achieve given the tough constraints everyone is working under at the moment.
