On a related note, we had another popular thread in HN earlier this week - (AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard' ) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44972151 which is quite the opposite of this original post.

> GenAI will never produce what they want

What's your argument supporting this? Ten years ago GenAI couldn't produce two coherent sentences. We've come a long way, what makes you think it won't go further?

> Ten years ago GenAI couldn't produce two coherent sentences.

Depending on the question, it still can't.

It's kinda crazy how you view repeating probabilistic outputs as "coherent sentences".

> We've come a long way, what makes you think it won't go further?

Where did I say it won't go further? I said it will never produce what they want.

Those are different things.

Regardless, you're focused on the wrong point.

That is what my company does except we basically hire out of high school. After the founders, 100% of our employees (including myself) were hired directly as high school interns, kept for years during college, and got offers after graduation.

I wrote about this a bit. I wish we could hire more. I am kind of shocked how few companies do it. There are a LOT of smart kids who would love a summer programming job.

https://simonsarris.com/p/growing-software-developers

The issue with hiring many juniors is, when there is another dev boom, all the juniors that were hired, now mids or seniors, are going to jump ship to whoever is going to pay them the most. So, the company can either grow talent and then pay them market rate or hire at market rates from other companies that grew them. Hiring juniors, while good for the industry in the long run, doesn't really benefit an individual company. It is game theory and it is still why senior developers make a lot of money despite there being an oversupply of juniors.

> all the juniors that were hired, now mids or seniors, are going to jump ship to whoever is going to pay them the most

Yeah, that's the point!

> So, the company can either grow talent and then pay them market rate or hire at market rates from other companies that grew them.

It's not a zero sum game. The simple fact you overlooked is not every junior jumps ship.

> Hiring juniors, while good for the industry in the long run, doesn't really benefit an individual company

Things that are good for the industry DO benefit individual companies. Having a large and capable talent pool is good for everyone.

> Hiring juniors, while good for the industry in the long run, doesn't really benefit an individual company

If this is really a concern, require a long-term employment contract from incoming candidates.

Yep, that's how the military solved it. ROTC trains you, but then you're committed for 4 years.

Unethical bullshit, but sure

Nothing unethical about voluntary contracts that you freely enter into.

There are tradeoffs and you'd do well to acknowledge agency in this world.

Sure, for varying values of "freely"

Is someone being forced? Can you call the police?

Also, a lot of companies are not attractive enough for seniors (low job security/ not good environment/ not exciting work/ etc), so they are forced to hire juniors

> This could be the next iteration of stealing talent to prevent others from owning the market. An actually intelligent investor could dominate by bucking the trend and hire lots of smart, eager junior candidates.

First, they'd have to identify them, which the interview process at most companies is terrible at.