this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Programming

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AI coding tools are replacing entry-level programming jobs faster than anyone predicted. The traditional path from junior to senior developer is collapsing, and the consequences for the entire industry could be devastating. If you mentor juniors or hire them, this one hits different.

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[–] Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 2 days ago (4 children)

What I've been seeing is the opposite: companies are replacing most senior devs with junior prompters. At least 3 places where I have friends working have let go several of their more expensive senior developers and replaced them with cheaper junior developers who can use AI.

[–] sobchak@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago

And offshoring to vibe coders. Saw an article the other day about Indian Amazon devs (well, probably the managers) saying that being forced to use Amazon's in-house models instead of Claude was hampering their productivity.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

One department did that. The pro-Ai manager hired a bunch of juniors in 2024. I'm all about giving people opportunities. But what I didn't know was they were all juniors who were vibe coders.

The whole team of like 30+ got fired during our summer 2025 layoffs.

Rumor has it none of the code was reusable and a new department inherited all of their responsibilities.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

The whole team of like 30+ got fired during our summer 2025 layoffs.

You missed an important detail.
What happened to the pro-Ai manager??

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 6 points 2 days ago

The price to pay is already happening with companies having more and more outages so

[–] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Especially when a good senior dev with a good grasp of AI can do wonders.