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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

We have a floor full of interns right now. Our India and Mexico offices do as well. Some of them will probably be offered full-time roles.

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.

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We, at a large Dutch bank, also do have 20+ interns but 0 positions for them in IT department. Leadership is projecting that if you do well in internship then you'll be hired. But no interns were hired in last 2 years...

That is a great example of the kind of bullshit I'm talking about.

How exactly are people supposed to reach a senior level if they aren't allowed to be junior developers first?

People have been asking the executive class this for a long while now: why don’t you care about training? Their response has ever been silence or threats or that’s what school is for. Do it on your own time, after the 50+ hours we demand from you. Some places get it and had a proper pipeline to train. A vast majority do not. And now they give us this. Great bunch of folks.

Basically the idea is become a senior at your own expense. Work for years without pay and only then get a job if and only if the new AI models by that time hasn't made mid or senior level engineers redundant as well.

…but how?

If no one will employ you to formally give you a verifiable senior title, how exactly is that supposed to happen?

By working for free.

That's basically what this field is turning into.

Unpaid 20-something interns fresh out of college are not quite the same thing as what I am referring to when I say junior software developer.

We pay our interns, as required by local law.

Key phrase is you hired them a few years ago. That’s not helpful in the discussion now.

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.

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