It’s becoming a common refrain that it isn’t the role that will be eliminated but the role’s use of AI will change and become a fundamental part of the role.

It isn’t that we’re getting stupider, we’ll just act differently with access to AI.

Junior Developers

The role of the Junior Developer is changing but isn’t at risk. Their mentors may change and their willingness to learn will be acute.

I’ve been wondering about the role of Junior Developers and what role they will play in the AI-dominated future. If any. Discussions around “vibe-coding” are ongoing. AI-generated code is reaching a fairly decent standard. One can easily conclude that the role of the Junior Developer will be eliminated. This would remove that vital rung on the ladder to becoming Senior Developer.

Vibe-coding will only take you so far. AI isn’t deterministic. Its results vary, so it’s impossible to definitively conclude suitability, security, maintainability or any other -abilities previously developed by the Junior Developer. The trick for the Junior is to recognise these shortcomings and go the extra mile to finishing the circle.

Vibe coding is good for knocking up a proof of concept or design. It will get you 80% of the way. It’s good for sparking ideas around and developing thoughts about how something could be implemented.

But AI isn’t a finished product, nor should it be expected to create one. The human is likely going to have to pick the remaining 20% up to complete the task – which might take 80% of the time.

The podcast below has a discussion of vibe coding and how it isn’t all the hype promises it to be. Also, how to use multiple models to-and-fro to try and get to a solution. (At about 15 minutes)

The role of the Junior will change to know how to utilise AI and learn from it.

The Junior Developer is left alone to develop discrete projects and tasks. They are able to utilise their usual research tools such as search engines, previous pull requests, colleague knowledge and add AI chatbots into the mix. The back and forth between the developer and these sources shield the Senior Developer from distraction. Once complete, the Junior Developer may present their work using whichever mechanism is common to their process (eg. Pull Request, presentation, informal chat). From this, the Senior Developer feeds back into the Junior their knowledge, wisdom and recommendations. The relationship between the Junior and Senior Developer must be one of mutual respect to allow this to work, and both must treat the AI actor as a support tool, if not a peer.

AI tools can achieve what humans often struggle with: which is to locate the information they require to solve a problem. It is the Junior Developer’s responsibility to learn form this and identify relevance and accuracy, informed with their growing experience and knowledge.

Interestingly, this podcast episode suggests that Junior Developers did not see the increase in productivity that their Senior counterparts did because they struggled forming their prompts to AI. This is definitely a skill a Junior can develop and carry forward to their Senior future.

Senior Developers

The role of the Senior Developer is changing but isn’t at risk. Their role is to use their wisdom in identifying shortcomings in AI-generated code whilst supporting juniors.

Senior Developers will become the last defence for the review and confirmation of code, not only from their juniors, but now also their AI colleagues. Within their wisdom comes best practices, security concerns and mitigations, business experience and community consensus.

Gone are the days when the serious developer could hide out in a dark office, hoodie up, keyboard tapping and an energy drink ready to go. Personally speaking, although often challenging, now is the time the seasoned developer needs to be personable.

The junior will need the guidance of the senior to be able to distinguish the benefits of AI from the risks of blindly copying-and-pasting their output. Avoiding the “in my day” conversations, the senior will be called upon and be responsible for the development of their junior colleagues even more. If only to avoid easy mistakes and being led down the garden path by a confident sounding AI, who hasn’t been led down similar paths by a search engine!

Meanwhile, the senior can use the AI for their own purposes and development. A senior developer will have increased opportunity to identify where AI could benefit the company and ensure it remains economical and can provide a healthy return on investment. Although every company is seemingly adding AI into their mix, it will be incumbent on the senior to temper the enthusiasm of their salespeople with realism. Perhaps a proof of concept or breakdown of potential costs. The junior can only benefit from being in the same room.

Another role of the Senior is to guide the AI to producing what is required for the standards of the organisation. Github for one provides the opportunity to create a set of rules that must be applied for every request. That way, and generated code will be generated according to standards and consistently.

The wildcard: Managers

The wildcard in this scenario is the manager, who will be responsible for the budget to retain existing staff and recruit new. Unfortunately, with limited time, a deafening crowd extolling the virtues of AI and tightening budgets, it is easy to think about cutting back. It is incumbent on the developers to remind management of the benefits of hiring and supporting humans.

The Junior should remember to record the last 20% of the project. This is the bit that humanity created, feeding into it their own personality, the context of the business and wisdom of their colleagues. This is not replicable by any AI. In order to be recruited and promoted, the Junior must take every opportunity to remind their managers of this. A good practice to get into to be recruited would be to work with a public project or a personal one – but in full view. Whilst a busy Github commit profile used to be an excellent way to demonstrate your interest, it’s worth going a little further to show the last mile.

Consider creating Issues and dropping research into comments. Talk to yourself and demonstrate evolution of your ideas as a human.

The Senior probably has a mortgage and family to support and can ill-afford with being made redundant because an AI bot can do the job cheaper. Unfortunately, it is often after the fact that this is realised so it is up to the Senior Developer to demonstrate their continuing value and contribution to the business and their colleagues.

The adage that is quickly becoming the standard phrase of the AI proponent, that an employee is only threatened by another employee who is able to use AI to their advantage, does bear some truth and scrutiny. The industry is changing, as it has a number of times before in times of the internet, the world wide web or architectural concepts such as micro-services or cloud and hybrid estates. AI doesn’t threaten seismic change, it offers the opportunity to spend time developing one’s own skills and those of others. Let the AI do the menial work whilst the Senior and Junior do what they do best – be human.