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There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and e

• mjburgess 1y ago
  This is always the case though. A factor of 50x productivity between expert and novice is small. Consider how long it take you to conduct foot surgery vs. a food surgeon -- close to a decade of medical school + medical experience -- just for a couple hours of work. There have never been that many businesses able to hire novices for this reason.
  • pc86 1y ago
    This is a big part of why a lot of developers' first 1-3 jobs are small mom & pop shops of varying levels of quality, almost none of which have "good" engineering cultures. Market rate for a new grad dev might be X, it's hard to find an entry level job at X but mom & pop business who needs 0.7 FTE developers is willing to pay 0.8X and even though the owner is batshit insane it's not a bad deal for the 22 and 23 year olds willing to do it.
    • mjburgess 1y ago
      Sure. I mean perhaps, LLMs will accelerate a return to a more medieval culture in tech where you "have to start at 12 to be any good". Personally, I think that's a good (enough) idea. By 22, I'd at least a decade of experience; my first job at 20 was as a contractor for a major national/multinational. Programming is a craft, and just like any other, the best time to learn it is when it's free to learn.
  • InitialLastName 1y ago
    I think for a surgeon as an example, quality may be a better metric than time. I'll bet I could conduct an attempted foot surgery way faster than a foot surgeon, but they're likely to conduct successful foot surgeries.
    • nradov 1y ago
      Sure, but no one has found a good metric for actually quantifying quality for surgeons. You can't look at just the rate of positive outcomes because often the best surgeons take on the worst cases that others won't even attempt. And we simply don't have enough reliable data to make proper metric adjustments based on individual patient attributes.
• abletonlive 1y ago
  This is a big issue in the short term but in the long term I actually think AI is going to be a huge democratization of work and company building. I spend a lot of time encouraging people to not fight the tide and spend that time intentionally experimenting and seeing what you can do. LLMs are already useful and it's interesting to me that anybody is arguing it's just good for toy applications. This is a poisonous mindset and results in a potentially far worse outcome than over-hyping AI for an individual. I am wondering if I should actually quit a >500K a year job based around LLM applications and try to build something on my own with it right now. I am NOT someone that thinks I can just craft some fancy prompt and let an LLM agent build me a company, but I think it's a very powerful tool when used with great intention. The new grads and entry level people are scrappy. That's why startups before LLMs liked to hire them. (besides being cheap, they are just passionate and willing to make a sacrifice to prove their worth) The ones with a lot of creativity have an opportunity right now that many of us did not when we were in their shoes. In my opinion, it's important to be technically potent in this era, but it's now even more important to be creative - and that's just what so many people lack. Sitting in front of a chat prompt and coming up with an idea is hard for the majority of people that would rather be told what to do or what direction to take. My message to the entry-level folks that are in this weird time period. It's tough, and we can all acknowledge that - but don't let cynicism shackle you. Before LLMs, your greatest asset was fresh eyes and the lack of cynicism brought upon by years of industry. Don't throw away that advantage just because the job market is tough. You, just like everybody else, have a very powerful tool and opportunity right in front of you. The amount of people trying to convince you that it's just a sham and hype means that you have less competition to worry about. You're actually lucky there's a huge cohort of experienced people that have completely dismissed LLMs because they were too egotistical to spend meaningful time evaluating it and experimenting with it. LLM capabilities are still changing every 6 months-1 year. Anybody that has decided concretely that there is nothing to see here is misleading you. Even in the current state of LLM if the critics don't see the value and how powerful it is mostly a lack of imagination that's at play. I don't know how else to say it. If I'm already able to eliminate someone's role by using an LLM then it's already powerful enough in its current state. You can argue that those roles were not meaningful or important and I'd agree - but we as a society are spending trillions on those roles right now and would continue to do so if not for LLMs
• mechagodzilla 1y ago
  Interns and new grads have always been a net-negative productivity-wise in my experience, it's just that eventually (after a small number of months/years) they turn into extremely productive more-senior employees. And interns and new grads can use AI too. This feels like asking "Why hire junior programmers now that we have compilers? We don't need people to write boring assembly anymore." If AI was genuinely a big productivity enhancer, we would just convert that into more software/features/optimizations/etc, just like people have been doing with productivity improvements in computers and software for the last 75 years.
  • alephnerd 1y ago
    It's a monetary issue at the end of the day. AI/ML and Offshoring/GCCs are both side effects of the fact that American new grad salaries in tech are now in the $110-140k range. At $70-80k the math for a new grad works out, but not at almost double that. Also, going remote first during COVID for extended periods proved that operations can work in a remote first manner, so at that point the argument was made that you can hire top talent at American new grad salaries abroad, and plenty of employees on visas were given the option to take a pay cut and "remigrate" to help start a GCC in their home country or get fired and try to find a job in 60 days around early-mid 2020. The skills aspect also played a role to a certain extent - by the late 2010s it was getting hard to find new grads who actually understood systems internals and OS/architecture concepts, so a lot of jobs adjacent to those ended up moving abroad to Israel, India, and Eastern Europe where universities still treat CS as engineering instead of an applied math disciple - I don't care if you can prove Dixon's factorization method using induction if you can't tell me how threading works or the rings in the Linux kernel. The Japan example mentioned above only works because Japanese salaries in Japan have remained extremely low and Japanese is not an extremely mainstream language (making it harder for Japanese firms to offshore en masse - though they have done so in plenty of industries where they used to hold a lead like Battery Chemistry).
    • sarchertech 1y ago
      > by the late 2010s it was getting hard to find new grads who actually understood systems internals and OS/architecture concepts, so a lot of jobs adjacent to those ended up moving abroad to Israel, India, and Eastern Europe where universities still treat CS as engineering instead of an applied math disciple That doesn’t fit my experience at all. The applied math vs engineering continuum is mostly dependent on whether a CS program at a given school came out of the engineering department or the math apartment. I haven’t noticed any shift on that spectrum coming from CS departments except that people are more likely to start out programming in higher level languages where they are more insulated from the hardware. That’s the same across countries though. I certainly haven’t noticed that Indian or Eastern European CS grads have a better understanding of the OS or the underlying hardware.
• brookst 1y ago
  I just can't agree with this argument at all. Today, you hire an intern and they need a lot of hand-holding, are often a net tax on the org, and they deliver a modest benefit. Tomorrow's interns will be accustomed to using AI, will need less hand-holding, will be able to leverage AI to deliver more. Their total impact will be much higher. The whole "entry level is screwed" view only works if you assume that companies want all of the drawbacks of interns and entry level employees AND there is some finite amount of work to be done, so yeah, they can get those drawbacks more cheaply from AI instead. But I just don't see it. I would much rather have one entry level employee producing the work of six because they know how to use AI. Everywhere I've worked, from 1-person startup to the biggest tech companies, has had a huge surplus of work to be done. We all talk about ruthless prioritization because of that limit. So... why exactly is the entry level screwed?
  • gerad 1y ago
    They don't have the experience to tell bad AI responses from good ones.
    • xp84 1y ago
      True, but this becomes less of an issue as AI improves, right? Which is the 'happier' direction to see a problem moving, as if AI doesn't improve, it threatens the jobs less.
      • hnthrow90348765 1y ago
        I would be worried about the eventual influence of advertising and profits over correctness
        • brookst 1y ago
          Why is the company who employs the intern paying for an AI service that corrupts its results with ads?
      • sarchertech 1y ago
• aloknnikhil 1y ago
  It's not that entry-level jobs / interns are irrelevant. It's more that entry-level has been redefined and it requires significant uplevelling in terms of skills necessary to do a job at that level. That's not necessarily a bad thing. As others have said here, I would be more willing to hand-off more complex tasks to interns / junior engineers because my expectation is they leverage AI to tackle it faster and learn in the process.
• ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  This is where the horrific disloyalty of both companies and employees, comes to bite us in the ass. The whole idea of interns, is as training positions. They are supposed to be a net negative. The idea is that they will either remain at the company, after their internship, or move to another company, taking the priorities of their trainers, with them. But nowadays, with corporate HR, actively doing everything they can to screw over their employees, and employees, being so transient, that they can barely remember the name of their employer, the whole thing is kind of a worthless exercise. At my old company, we trained Japanese interns. They would often relocate to the US, for 2-year visas, and became very good engineers, upon returning to Japan. It was well worth it.
  • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >At my old company, we trained Japanese interns. They would often relocate to the US, for 2-year visas, and became very good engineers, Damn, I wish that was me. Having someone mentor you at the beginning of your career instead of having to self learn and fumble your way around never knowing if you're on the right track or not, is massive force multiplier that pays massive dividends over your career. It's like entering the stock market with 1 million $ capital vs 100 $. You're also less likely to build bad habits if nobody with experience teaches you early on.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      Yup. It was a standard part of their HR policy. They are all about long, long-term employment. They are a marquée company, and get the best of the best, direct from top universities. Also, no one has less than a Master's, over there. We got damn good engineers as interns.
      • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        >Also, no one has less than a Master's, over there. I feel this is pretty much the norm everywhere in Europe and Asia. No serious engineering company in Germany even looks at your resume it there's no MSc. degree listed, especially since education is mostly free for everyone so not having a degree is seen as a "you problem", but also it leads to degree inflation, where only PhD or post-docs get taken seriously for some high level positions. I don't remember ever seeing a senior manager/CTO without the "Dr." or even "Prof. Dr." title in the top German engineering companies. I think mostly the US has the concept of the cowboy self taught engineer who dropped out of college to build a trillion dollar empire in his parents garage.
• Loughla 1y ago
  So what happens when you retire and have no replacement because you didn't invest in entry level humans? This feels like the ultimate pulling up the ladder after you type of move.
• dylan604 1y ago
  Are you honestly trying to tell us that the code you receive from an AI is not requiring any of your time to review and tweak and is 100% correct every time and ready to deploy into your code base with no changes what so ever? You my friend must be a steely eyed missile man of prompting
  • throwuxiytayq 1y ago
    Consider that there are no humans in existence that fulfill your requirements, not to mention $20/mo ones
    • dylan604 1y ago
      why would i consider that when there absolutely are humans that can do that. your dollar value is just ridiculous. if you're a hot shit dev that no longer needs junior devs, then if you spend 15 minutes refactoring the AI output, then you're underwater on that $20/mo value
• diogolsq 1y ago
  You’re right that AI is fast and often more efficient than entry-level humans for certain tasks — but I’d argue that what you’re describing isn’t delegation, it’s just choosing to do the work yourself via a tool. Implementation costs are lower now, so you decide to do it on your own. Delegation, properly defined, involves transferring not just the task but the judgment and ownership of its outcome. The perfect delegation is when you delegate to someone because you trust them to make decisions the way you would — or at least in a way you respect and understand. You can’t fully delegate to AI — and frankly, you shouldn’t. AI requires prompting, interpretation, and post-processing. That’s still you doing the thinking. The implementation cost is low, sure, but the decision-making cost still sits with you. That’s not delegation; it’s assisted execution. Humans, on the other hand, can be delegated to — truly. Because over time, they internalize your goals, adapt to your context, and become accountable in a way AI never can. Many reasons why AI can't fill your shoes: 1. Shallow context – It lacks awareness of organizational norms, unspoken expectations, or domain-specific nuance that’s not in the prompt or is not explicit in the code base. 2. No skin in the game – AI doesn’t have a career, reputation, or consequences. A junior human, once trained and trusted, becomes not only faster but also independently responsible. Junior and Interns can also use AI tools.
  • dasil003 1y ago
    You said exactly what I came here to say. Maybe some day AI will truly be able to think and reason in a way that can approximate a human, but we're still very far from that. And even when we do, the accountability problem means trusting AI is a huge risk. It's true that there are white collar jobs that don't require actual thinking, and those are vulnerable, but that's just the latest progression of computerization/automation that's been happening steadily for the last 70 years already. It's also true that AI will completely change the nature of software development, meaning that you won't be able to coast just on arcane syntax knowledge the way a lot of programmers have been able to so far. But the fundamental precision of logical thought and mapping it to a desirable human outcome will still be needed, the only change is how you arrive there. This actually benefits young people who are already becoming "AI native" and will be better equipped to leverage AI capabilities to the max.
• einpoklum 1y ago
  > Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? 1. Because, generally, they don't. 2. Because an LLM is not a person, it's a chatbot. 3. "Hire an intern" is that US thing when people work without getting real wages, right? Grrr :-(
  • aianus 1y ago
    Interns make $75k+ in tech in the US. It's definitely not unpaid. In fact my school would not give course credit for internships if they were unpaid.
• baxtr 1y ago
  I think it’s the other way around. If LLMs continue to become more powerful, hiring more juniors who can use them will be a no-brainer.
  • phatfish 1y ago
    Yup, apart from a few companies at the cutting edge the most difficult problems to solve in a work environment are not technical.
• phailhaus 1y ago
  I don't get this because someone has to work with the AI to get the job done. Those are the entry-level roles! The manager who's swamped with work sure as hell isn't going to do it.
• necheffa 1y ago
  > Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? AI can barely provide the code for a simple linked list without dropping NULL pointer dereferences every other line... Been interviewing new grads all week. I'd take a high performing new grad that can be mentored into the next generation of engineer any day. If you don't want to do constant hand holding with a "meh" candidate...why would you want to do constant hand holding with AI? > I often find myself choosing to just use an AI for work I would have delegated to them, because I need it fast and I need it now. Not sure what you are working on. I would never prioritize speed over quality - but I do work in a public safety context. I'm actually not even sure of the legality of using an AI for design work but we have a company policy that all design analysis must still be signed off on by a human engineer in full as if it were 100% their own. I certainly won't be signing my name on a document full of AI slop. Now an analysis done by a real human engineer with the aid of AI - sure, I'd walk through the same verification process I'd walk through for a traditional analysis document before signing my name on the cover sheet. And that is something a jr. can bring to me to verify.
• pedalpete 1y ago
  We've been doing the exact opposite for some positions. I've been interviewing marketing people for the last few months (I have a marketing background from long ago), and the senior people were either way too expensive for our bootstrapped start-up, or not of the caliber we want in the company. At the same time, there are some amazing recent grads and even interns who can't get jobs. We've been hiring the younger group, and contracting for a few days a week with the more experienced people. Combine that with AI, and you've got a powerful combination. That's our theory anyway. It's worked pretty well with our engineers. We are a team of 4 experienced engineers, though as CEO I don't really get to code anymore, and 1 exceptional intern. We've just hired our 2nd intern.
• jmyeet 1y ago
  This is basically what happened after 2008. The entry level jobs college grads did basically disappeared and didn't really come back for many years. So we kind of lost half a generation. Those who missed out are the ones who weren't able to buy a house or start a family and are now in their 40s, destined to be permanent renters who can never retire. The same thing will happen to Gen Z because of AI. In both cases, the net effect of this (and the desired outcome) is to suppress wages. Not only of entry-level job but every job. The tech sector is going to spend the next decade clawing back the high costs of tech people from the last 15-20 years. The hubris here is that we've had a unprecedented boom such that many in the workforce have never experienced a recession, what I'd call "children of summer" (to borrow a George RR Martin'ism). People have fallen into the trap of the myth of meritocracy. Too many people thing that those who are living paycheck to paycheck (or are outright unhoused) are somehow at fault when spiralling housing costs, limited opportunities and stagnant real wages are pretty much responsible for everything. All of this is a giant wealth transfer to the richest 0.01% who are already insanely wealthy. I'm convinced we're beyond the point where we can solve the problems of runaway capitalism with electoral politics. This only ends in tyranny of a permanent underclass or revolution.
• hollowturtle 1y ago
  imo comparing entry-level people with ai is very short sighted, I was smarter than every dumb dinosaur at my first job, I was so eager to learn and proactive and positive... i probably was very lucky too but my point is i don't believe this whole thing that a junior is worse than ai, i'd rather say the contrary
• sauercrowd 1y ago
  "intern" and "entry level" are proxies for complexity with these comparisons, not actual seniority. We'll keep hiring interns and entry level positions, they'll just do other things.
• snowwrestler 1y ago
  Companies reducing young hires because of AI are doing it backward. Returns on AI will be accelerated by early-career staff because they are already eagerly using AI in daily life, and have the least attachment to how jobs are done now. You’re probably not going to transform your company by issuing Claude licenses to comfortable middle-aged career professionals who are emotionally attached to their personal definition of competency. Companies should be grabbing the kids who just used AI to cheat their way through senior year, because that sort of opportunistic short-cutting is exactly what companies want to do with AI in their business.
  • sarchertech 1y ago
    If the AI can write code to a level that doesn’t need an experienced person to check the output, you don’t need tech companies at all.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• anshumankmr 1y ago
  >Not that I'm saying AI is a god-send, but new grads and entry-level roles are kind of screwed. A company that I know of is having a L3 hiring freeze also and some people are downgraded from L4 to L3 or L5 to L4 also.. Getting more work for less cost.
• uludag 1y ago
  I thought the whole idea of automation though was to lower the skill requirement. Everyone compares AI to the industrial revolution and the shift from artisan work to factory work. If this analogy were to hold true, then what employers should actually be wanting is more junior devs, maybe even non-devs, hired at a much cheaper wage. A senior dev may be able to outperform a junior by a lot, but assuming the AI is good enough, four juniors or like 10 non-devs should be able to outperform a senior. This obviously not being the case shows that we're not in a AI driven fundamental paradigm shift, but rather run of the mill cost cutting measures. Like suppose a tech bubble pops and there are mass layoffs (like the Dotcom bubble). Obviously people will loose their jobs. AI hype merchants will almost definitely try to push the narrative that these losses are from AI advancements in an effort to retain funding.
• runeks 1y ago
  > Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. The AI will definitely require handholding. And that hand-holder will be an intern or a recent college-grad.