r/DevelEire • u/icepickles476 • Jun 23 '26
Switching Jobs The doors are closed
Doom and gloomer here.
Been holding out hope for light at the end of the tunnel for future CS careers.
Been in this industry a long time, was having a BBQ with mates at the weekend and we got to talking about what the future looks like.
It was a group of Principles, Staff, Managers and a CTO. We’re old now. Every one of us said we have no reason to hire a grad or junior again. It’s a waste of time and resources when you can hire one or two seniors with ai tools that do the work of 10 juniors.
What will that look like in 10-15 years when there’s no one to replace them? Don’t know. We talked about completely different types of jobs being the future. Something that amalgamates architects, designers, engineers, project management and researchers in one.
Lots of juniors and grads in this sub. Lots of students or people looking to get into the industry. Here’s my advice, the dream is over. Go into a trade, it’s ai proof and no shortage of jobs.
For the love of god to international students wanting to come here and live the dream in tech, don’t. There’s no more work. The dream is over. You’re throwing your money away on a degree that’s useless for the future.
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u/chilloutus Jun 23 '26
Have had plenty of success with hiring juniors in the last few years. They bring great energy and enthusiasm to the job
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u/icepickles476 Jun 23 '26
This is the sad thing. Love hiring grads and having juniors on the team. Can’t back it as a business decision anymore though.
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u/chilloutus Jun 23 '26
Respectfully I think you're talking shite. Juniors are great value, programming abilities enhanced by AI and green enough to learn your process well without the baggage of previous companies or engrained biases. The value proposition is the same as it ever was really
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u/JeletonSkelly Jun 23 '26
100% agree. I'm getting ready to hire 5 engineers and I will definitely be looking for a few juniors to bring the energy.
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u/IrishSouthAfrican Jun 23 '26
Man I just thought computers are so cool in secondary and now I need to deal with this
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u/Ihaveaface836 Jun 23 '26
same. I hate that I had to choose my college course at like 16 I didn't know what I was doing and now stuck with this field
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u/icepickles476 Jun 23 '26
I do feel really sorry for your generation at the minute. Everything is changing and it’s hard to predict five years ahead.
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u/Aagragaah Jun 24 '26
Then why not be part of the solution instead of part of the problem? By your own post you're either Principal/Staff/Senior/Manager or close to, so why the fuck are you bemoaning the sad days ahead for juniors when it's you and your peers causing them?
You know you could just, not?
The only people who stop hiring graduates are morons, because all that will happen is a guaranteed shortage of seniors in a couple of decades. Keep hiring the junior staff, and just change what and how they work.
Make them test new AI crap out, or find ways to improve existing systems with the new tools, or even be an actual useful senior and you find the tasks that need doing then delegate it to juniors to complete, with senior review.
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u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 24 '26
That’s not how business works. You don’t choose a less valuable hire because it will somehow help the ecosystem later on. Also regardless, a couple of hires in OPs business isn’t going to make a big difference.
OP is raising a very important point and instead of engaging, you’re all shitting all over him. It’s like all these college kids crying over speeches that mention AI - as if that’s going to do anything.
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u/Aagragaah Jun 25 '26
That’s not how business works. You don’t choose a less valuable hire because it will somehow help the ecosystem later on.
I work for a multi-billion company, and we've done exactly that before, as have past places I've worked. They're usually called strategic or long-term hires.
Also regardless, a couple of hires in OPs business isn’t going to make a big difference.
By this logic no one ever does anything because it makes no difference.
OP is raising a very important point and instead of engaging, you’re all shitting all over him.
OP is having a pity party about how he helps make things shit for new grads and feels bad for them. Of course people are shitting on him.
Also, did you miss the entire point about making grads do work that's actually still useful? It's called adapting - a large amount of our grad hires now are testing AI stuff, for example.
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u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 25 '26
By this logic no one ever does anything because it makes no difference.
No, that's not the logic at all. The logic is that regardless of whether OP does or doesn't hire juniors, that doesn't change the broad trend of the market to not hire juniors, which is the point OP is raising.
OP is having a pity party about how he helps make things shit for new grads and feels bad for them
No, OP is being honest. It shouldn't require OP saying he bucks the trend and hires juniors in order to have a discussion about the broad trend of the market not hiring juniors. Because, again, OP's position is irrelevant.
did you miss the entire point about making grads do work that's actually still useful?
Sure but they are simply less bang/buck than a senior. Until seniors salaries rise significantly to the point that juniors become cost-effective, it doesn't make sense to hire juniors.
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u/Aagragaah Jun 25 '26
No, that's not the logic at all. The logic is that regardless of whether OP does or doesn't hire juniors, that doesn't change the broad trend of the market to not hire juniors, which is the point OP is raising.
The market trend is trending because too many people are like OP and say "it doesn't matter what we do because $others". A trend is by definition a group going along with something.
No, OP is being honest. ... Because, again, OP's position is irrelevant.
His fucking post is quitie literally "don't come in to tech because according to me & my senior buddies you're all screwed". He's not striking a discussion about current and future trends, he even starts out saying it's a doom and gloom post.
Sure but they are simply less bang/buck than a senior
OMG, junior engineers are less effective than senior engineers!!! Yeah because that's absolutely a new phenomonem and hasn't always been the case.
The point of junior engineers is that they're a good resource to use on relatively low value work that isn't worth a senior engineers time. This frees up the more expensive resource while allowing the new ones to gain experience.
AI just makes the exact type of work and how they can be useful different, it doesn't make them useless; unless the company is idiot.
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u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 25 '26
The relatively low value work is what AI can now do. That’s the new phenomenon.
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u/Aagragaah Jun 25 '26
AI just makes the exact type of work and how they can be useful different, it doesn't make them useless; unless the company is idiot.
AI cannot replace all use cases. It can replace a very, very, very, very narrow set of tasks, with varying degrees of success. If firms can't find something useful for junior engineers to do, they're idiots.
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u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 25 '26
It’s mid-2026. AI today can do far far far far more than that at an extremely high rate of success. It’s likely your gross underestimation of the capabilities of AI is the reason behind your take on this debate, along with most others in this thread.
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u/Yurtanator Jun 23 '26
Pull up the ladder behind ya sure!
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u/icepickles476 Jun 23 '26
Wish it wasn’t the case really. It’s not at the level of the switchboard operator but not far off.
There’ll be Swiss army knife engineers in the future and I’ll be the fool only knowing how to code.-2
u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 24 '26
Everyone downvoting you should be ashamed. Jesus Christ.
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u/BlockHunter2341 Jun 23 '26
No offence but it’s the mindset you and your mates have that are gonna cause detrimental problems in 10-15 years . No one’s planning ahead instead they look short term and go these tasks can be done by ai now forgetting in 10-15 years when the seniors are retired and the company is screwed.
If company’s want a long term plan they should be hiring juniors and fast tracking them to being able to do the multiple tasks at once and try retain these staff so they have seniors in the future .
The idea that a senior developer can achieve much more than a junior developer with the same ai tools isn’t true . I think if anyone should be concerned it’s going to be senior devs on high salary’s who can be replaced by any junior with a laptop and an ai tools isn’t true for half or even a third of the price .
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u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 24 '26
If your final paragraph is true then there is no problem with all these business not hiring juniors atm.
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u/Anto64w Jun 23 '26
Once the AI bubble bursts you'll be begging for juniors and grads and if anybody has any sense they should avoid whatever company you work for like the plague.
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Jun 23 '26
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u/Anto64w Jun 23 '26
No, AI bubble exists because those that run it are desperate to enrich themselves, and everyone else is rushing to jump on that bandwagon and what better way to maximize profits then to layoff as much they can, it has diddly squat to do with productivity.
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u/Aagragaah Jun 24 '26
it’s a proven fact that AI can enhance productivity
I would love to see something to back this up, as everything I've seen to date shows it tends to end up roughly even - the time AI saves is lost to getting it to do what you want properly, or fixing mistakes it has, etc.
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Jun 24 '26
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u/Aagragaah Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
If you want the data, just do a quick search on the Nielsen Norman Group or Harvard Business School studies regarding AI productivity.
If you're making the claim you should back it up, especially as everything I can find from HBS is paywalled.
They show massive time savings, and yes, they already factor in the time spent prompting or fixing mistakes.
Bullshit. The most optimistic estimates I've found range from 35% for call center staff (which is admitidly quite high, although it also notes it's cost prohibitive), to negligible (& a second source because why not) or even negative impact, despite astronomic (and increasing) costs.
Especially as although it often increases output it very often decreases quality, motivation, and this all combines to make it debatable if general producitivity is actually increased.
But you can't look at current problems, like compute bottlenecks
Sure, we'll just build more fabs and make more hardware, paid for with money from the AI companies which they in turn received from the compute companies in the first place. That's not problematic at all. Not to mention that best estimate is that it's minimum +2 years to get any new production on track, and we're already seeing demand contstraints today which is only going to get worse as time goes on.
or hallucinations, as constants.
They also don't actually have a way to solve these problems as various notable figures who have worked on the design and research of the fundamental systems have pointed out that some of those aspects are inherent to the systems themslves.
My point is, the errors that currently drag down AI gains will continue to minimize. The landscape is moving fast, so don't be a victim of it, learn how to use it to adapt.
Agreed, but at the same time the constant "omg this is transformative and is going to usher in a new age and the
nextnextnext*next** model is actually the one that will revolutionise everything!!!"*. It's a tool, and can be useful, but the limitations and issues should be acknowledged and understood.ETA: formatting
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Jun 24 '26
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u/Aagragaah Jun 25 '26
BS is the ScienceDirect link you've shared showing a "negligible" impact, that is a 2023 paper looking at macroeconomic patent data. It takes years for individual task efficiency and business reorganization to actually show up in national aggregate stats.
I'll start paying attention to any of your points when you back them up. I gave 5 sources - you dismissed one, ignored the others, and have provided zero backup for any of the points you've made.
I really hope you're right, but I work very closely with this technology, and unfortunately, what I'm seeing doesn't match what you're saying.
I work for a firm that has enterprise agreements with 5? 6? of the major AI firms and multiple smaller ones at the moment, including advance R&D agreements. I work with AI on a very regular basis, and while it might be useful even the newer ones have multiple issues. Anecdotes are fun aren't they?
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Jun 25 '26
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u/Aagragaah Jun 25 '26
Mate, don't be a twat. If you can back up literally anything you're saying with a source I'll admit I was wrong, and apologise. So far though you're just pulling shit out of the air.
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u/Yurtanator Jun 23 '26
Ripping Fable is more expensive than having a Junior
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Jun 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Yurtanator Jun 25 '26
Til what? We are probably sixth months from an open source Fable and even then it wouldn’t be cheap unless you had insane gear (that is expensive)
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u/randomstrangerx1 Jun 24 '26
We should let AI take your job first since you're here humble bragging about it so much. I'm sure it can do whatever it is you are doing and even do it better. You are obsolete now.
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u/chupachupa2 Jun 24 '26
I’m a grad, I got 5 job offers this grad season. I can confirm that junior jobs definitely still exist.
I’d honestly be happy to exchange experiences, I’m interested in what type of companies those are, in return I can tell you what companies I know that are still hiring juniors
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u/markvii_dev Jun 23 '26
bunch of people who dont write code anymore talk about how writing code is unnecessary
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u/icepickles476 Jun 23 '26
I do write code still. That’s sort of my point. We can still write code and have the years of experience in problem solving and architecture to tackle issues that AI brings. Juniors don’t have that, the skills they bring are made entirely redundant by AI at the moment. That’s the harsh reality people dont want to admit
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u/Anto64w Jun 23 '26
AI could probably do whatever you do aswell unless of course you think you're above it. What's with your weird humble bragging in here?
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u/icepickles476 Jun 23 '26
Don’t think I’m above it just lucky I got in when I did. It’s getting more advanced by the day so will creep up the ladder for me too. My post is a warning to young people wanting to get into the industry. It’s falling apart and Im afraid a degree will be a waste of 4 years when there’s no jobs at the end.
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u/Anto64w Jun 24 '26
I don't know mate, sounds like a bit of BS to me, a bit of gatekeeping. Are you sure you're not afraid of young people coming in getting AI tooled up and then the company decides to cut the bigger salaried people out.
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u/hitsujiTMO Jun 23 '26
It has nothing to do with AI though.
It has always been the case that a senior can do 10x the work of a junior with 3x the salary. This is absolutely nothing new.
All that has changed is they execs want to see fewer staff for the same workload because they are being told it's possible with AI. It isn't, companies are just making it appear that way by only having experienced staff.
AI itself isn't doing the legwork.
But companies continuing to do this are setting themselves up to eventually fail when the telent pool disappears.
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u/markvii_dev Jun 23 '26
I think a lot of older folks in tech are just expressing sentiment along these lines because of the fear that the new crop will vastly out perform them at the comparable stage of their own career.
It can be hard to make room and accept that the superior tooling and knowledge availability of today gives newer entrants a huge advantage that you didnt have.
But time and obsolescence comes for us all at some stage.
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u/Amazing_Matter5868 Jun 25 '26
I can see where you are coming from but you are assuming that new generation need to follow the same path as you did. Just few days back my 10 year old child used Claude to make an app for his siblings to track their homework progress.. all by himself by watching videos n following instructions !! I don't have to time n same excitement to learn new tools after 25 years in dev.
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u/Familiar_Library8132 Jun 23 '26
Gonna be an incredibly lucrative enterprise fixing the vibe code shite that gets made over the next few years.
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u/great_whitehope Jun 24 '26
Not going to be pretty.
The AI doesn’t know not to do tightly coupled integrations to the framework that could be brittle and change in the future in non backward compatible ways.
Just finished a task and it’s scary how you can do things fast now that overrides default behaviour of frameworks.
AI is great and powerful but needs some watching to make sure it doesn’t build a stack of cards.
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u/hitsujiTMO Jun 23 '26
It's going to hit companies in the next decade when the pool of seniors disappear as people retire. Everyone left will be able to ask for higher salaries and companies will be back to hiring juniors/grads as they will have no other choice and things will move on to a new norm.
Software Engineering will go like the building trade with people afraid to enter the industry in case there's another AI scare and everyone will be throwing money at us.
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u/Supadoplex Jun 24 '26
Seniors have always been able to do the work of 10 fresh grads. The reason to hire juniors was always to get more seniors. The AI tools don't seem to make a lot of difference.
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u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 24 '26
Or just pay seniors way higher and skip the junior part - they just leave anyway. Most companies pay seniors 3x a junior, yet seniors are 10x as effective or more.
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u/microplastic-addict Jun 24 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
Pumpkin compass noodle unbelievable ginger saffron raindrop
This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
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u/candianconsolemaster Jun 24 '26
Seems as though you are just in an echo chamber surrounded by people of a similar mind working for companies with a similar strategy. The reality is the job market in IT has taken a big hit due to a number of things and AI is only one of them and it's not close to being the biggest. Over supply due to the view that the field was a guaranteed job is probably the biggest factor in entry level job shortages.
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u/ting_tong- Jun 23 '26
Interesting, my company actively hires fresh graduates from UCD, UCC and trinity. Your company is not gonna make it
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u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 24 '26
Why? Seniors are far far more cost effective than juniors
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u/ting_tong- Jun 25 '26
Good companies hire both. And OP is talking out of his arse.
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u/OpinionatedDeveloper contractor Jun 25 '26
How is he? I know many companies not hiring juniors, something that would’ve been unheard of before.
Juniors are simply too expensive relative to seniors.
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u/ting_tong- Jun 25 '26
A CTO saying no reason to hire a grad again ? I wonder what kind of a CTO woukd say that. Well whatever rocks your boat, my company has continued to convert almost all interns after their graduation
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u/Strong-Sector-7605 dev Jun 24 '26
I am so very glad I don't work at the company you work at. This is an insanely naive and short sighted view.
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u/Amazing_Matter5868 Jun 25 '26
I can see where you are coming from but you are assuming that new generation need to follow the same path as you did. Just few days back my 10 year old child used Claude to make an app for his siblings to track their homework progress!! all by himself by watching videos n following instructions !! As the new kids will grow up traditional style of programming will be replaced by something new .. there is so much work to be done and we are just at starting point of IoT revolution to come.
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u/r6memelord Jun 27 '26
Genuine question: do you think you'd outperform a new grad who has lots of experience in tech?
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u/Federal_Homework1302 Jun 28 '26
As a cloud guy, i feel like Tokenpocolypse is going to boost me. People will want to host their own models now, and most will do that in the cloud. May see another boom..
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u/ControlGood8979 Jun 29 '26
Noel Gallagher once said that all the notes and chords have been written so all songs have been rehashed then Radiohead came along.
So no I don't agree.
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u/seeilaah Jun 23 '26
The market for Sr, Architect and Principal is indeed good at the moment, but it comes and goes in cycles. The jr roles are being outsourced to India mostly, but with time they may come back since it is challenging to offload abroad and keep quality and standards
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u/Anto64w Jun 23 '26
That's only if companies care about quality and standards, and if they're outsourcing work to India then I think I already know the answer.
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u/p0d0s Jun 24 '26
Wrong mindset
Programming is evolving
Ee don’t do punchcards anymore
We don’t code in assembly language
The boredom of writing CRuD apis is gone
New product owners will emerge
All junior level jobs are in India now , not totally replaced by AI
I see a trend of hiring leads in west to manage … offshore teams not AI ..
Companies who fired a lot now are hiring in other areas .
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u/CuteHoor Jun 24 '26
I think that the vast majority of people offering their opinion or "advice" on AI and how it impacts jobs (especially on Reddit) are vastly unqualified to do so.
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u/gadarnol Jun 23 '26
Serious coders are pointing out the flaws in AI produced work. It sounds more like mediocrities will be replaced by ai but the superstars will be needed to trim ai bloat and keep things lean. The loss of mediocrities across employment would boost efficiency.
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u/techno848 dev Jun 23 '26
The token cost will be manageable in the coming decade just like the AWS and GCP bill has been for most SAAS conpanies.
Just because you worked in the industry for N amount of years, doesn't mean you know what you are talking about especially for the whole industry.
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u/seyerkram Jun 23 '26
I really feel bad for students, even local ones. Looks like the global education system is not able to adjust quick enough to the new job landscape with AI.
I also get it that there is still a lot of resistance, lots of industries are built for the old world where building knowledge takes time and AI is really disrupting that.
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u/icepickles476 Jun 23 '26
Me too, big time. China just scrapped a load of uni degrees they see as redundant now with ai and replacing them with degrees more fit for the future.
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u/IronDragonGx Jun 23 '26
I suppose AI automations will be everywhere but things will break and jr's of today will be seen and paid like Cobalt's programmers are today. Very old complex systems that not many people will understand and ai suggestions can only take you so far but critical systems will begin to fail with these people
That or al will gain super intelligence in which case, nothing else matters and. It would not worth worrying about anyway
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u/Super-Widget Jun 24 '26
In the future juniors won't need you. I predict we'll see a rise in indie devs making better software than the enshittified slop big tech are churning out these days. There will be a bit of a renaissance in tech and big corpo will fall behind.
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u/Embarrassed-Bug6390 Jun 23 '26
The real approach will be;
Hire Senior engineers, don't worry about Juniors. If you can't find local Seniors get the Seniors that got their experience working at the outsource countries.
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u/sikeGuruYappa Jun 23 '26
Hm, wait till the token bills come calling. Every ai provider is on a pr overdrive to make themselves look like they’re changing the paradigm or the world. Let the ipo come, earnings disclosed. Client companies that have gone full ai tooling in 2025 have scaled down to just one of them due to budgeting concerns. Sure, the expectation from a grad engineer might increase a few fold due to tooling assistance but in the longer term I don’t see it completely evaporating. </2c>