I Won't Hire Juniors Anymore

Yep, that's exactly the point, and it's the main thing that keeps me up about this.

At some point, the competition for anyone who has any material experience will skyrocket, and salaries will go well into the six digits for anyone who can understand what a `for` loop is.

I’m betting this will happen within 5-8 years, especially if the number of people going into the field is cratering in ways that degree attendance is suggesting. Reports out of some universities are seeing a 30+% YoY decline in their CS programs, which has never been seen before in modern (post-1900) higher education.

And of course, this will still destroy companies, because the most effective users of AI are the seniors with deep domain experience, who know a lot about frameworks and data structures and how the products they build are put together. Because what AI lacks is judgement and taste, which is what seniors need a lot of experience with. Any company refusing to hire juniors now will eventually lose this deep domain experience, either mostly or fully, due to a lack of juniors coming up through the ranks.