Junior Job Postings and the Impact of Ai

A few years ago, I distinctly remembered that I started to see junior (entry-level) job postings requiring several years of experience. While I found that requirement to be utterly absurd, as a founder, I can understand why such job postings emerged.

Essentially,, they may want to hire someone affordable but can do lots of things. In the most extreme case I witnessed, they aimed to hire someone capable of handling everything from DevOps to frontend development, which basically means one good engineering team.

With the advent of ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot, everyone anticipates that AI will significantly ease and enhance an engineer’s work. Even in my case, I use one of these tools every day for specific purposes. However, the AI suggestions can sometimes seem peculiar, and we cannot simply implement them in production without careful consideration at this moment.

One of my concerns is the fate of junior job opportunities. Will companies continue to hire fresh graduates, or will they perhaps add a new requirement, such as an excellent understanding of AI/ML for all engineers?

This raises the question of how these recent graduates will secure jobs in the market. The only plausible explanation might be that they need to try to find practical experience through internships instead of high level educations such as master, PhD and potentially postpone their graduation dates until they accumulate enough experience.

It is indeed disheartening if this trend continues. Do you have any thoughts on this matter?