No place that's hiring will give you the time of day until you already have the word "Senior" in your title. But no one can explain where Seniors are supposed to come from though.
I hired a junior engineering a few years ago. And have done every few years for about a decade.
I work at a mid-size, PE-owned company that's been around for 50+ years, that operates in the enterprise SaaS space. Junior roles aren't going anywhere. But, the expectations of those junior hires will change (as they have evolved since I was junior myself, way back in the 90s).
Will AI change how we hire and retain talent? Of course.
How exactly are people supposed to reach a senior level if they aren't allowed to be junior developers first?
If no one will employ you to formally give you a verifiable senior title, how exactly is that supposed to happen?
That's basically what this field is turning into.
Edit: Missed this was in response to “extinct for a long time” which makes more sense. It is true that it is an entirely different world than three years ago.
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.
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'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.