3/2/26
The entire point of hiring junior engineers is to take a shorter term productivity hit so that you can train up a valuable mid level engineer who knows your code, company, and culture inside and out.
Saying something like “one senior engineer can deliver what it used to take five junior engineers to deliver” is totally inane. Junior engineers deliver subpar solutions even if you have to heavily guide them, and answer all their questions. That’s fine. They’re learning.
It’s worth doing this babysitting for a junior. It is rewarding in a human sense. You’re helping a colleague become a better engineer. It’s also a great economic choice for the health of your team and project in the longer term.
We don’t consider junior engineers who repeatedly fail to learn from our instruction as successful. If they keep asking the same questions and making the same mistakes we start to get worried they won’t be a good fit after all.
If this is what we’re comparing our current AI tooling to, I don’t understand why we’re excited at all.