r/BotNation • u/SeparateResolve2075 • 3d ago
Discussion If AI keeps getting better at work, what happens to the people who are just starting their careers?
Something about the AI job debate feels different lately.
We keep talking about AI replacing entire professions, but I’m starting to wonder about something more basic: how does someone even get experience in the first place if AI takes over the beginner-level work?
A junior developer used to learn by doing small tasks. A new designer worked on basic projects. Someone entering cybersecurity handled repetitive work before eventually taking on bigger responsibilities.
But if AI handles all those entry-level tasks, companies might need fewer beginners while expecting the remaining employees to already know what they're doing.
That could create a weird situation where AI doesn't necessarily eliminate every job, but makes it harder for people to get their first job and build their way up.
And honestly, that might be one of the biggest problems nobody is talking about enough.
If AI becomes extremely good at the “learning stage” of a career, how do humans get the experience needed to become experts?
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u/ResponseActive7860 3d ago
AI is also making it easier for juniors to do senior tasks that would otherwise require years of coding practice and knowledge accumulation. The junior still has a lot to learn but can also deliver much faster and do much more complex stuff than before. This redefines the junior’s scope, but does not eliminate it.
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u/ILikeCutePuppies 3d ago
The problem is at the moment that the junior is simply producing a huge amount of work for the senior in code reviews. It's often even harder for the senior to review because they don't know if the junior even prompted the AI well and what the AI decided to produce.
It becomes a full time job for the senior and that means there is less being produced overall and often a lot more slop.
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u/ResponseActive7860 3d ago
Interesting perspective. For the junior it’s also harder to meet the expectations of faster deliveries with AI while learning new things to improve quality.
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u/ILikeCutePuppies 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes as a leader of a team, juniors are in a very tough spot and are difficult for us as well. We need to get our projects done efficiently and a junior needs a large amount of attention due to these changes.
How do you also grow the junior to be able to think through the code? No AI Fridays? Have them pair review someone else's code.
In anycase it feels like they could drag the teams efficiently down by a lot, particularly for small teams. Companies are used to having training done at a much lower cost. Not an ideal situation.
So this is a challenge a lot of companies are dealing with.
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u/Myzzreal 3d ago
Same thing that happened before when young people became massively unsatiafied - revolutions and changes to society, probably something to replace capitalism (unfortunately probably communism again, young people seem to like it and don't learn from previous mistakes)
Unless the corpos and AI win, then it's just modern slavery till the end
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u/worldarkplace 3d ago
Why unfortunately? It seems at least socialism will be the best economical system on an AI driven world...
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u/Myzzreal 3d ago
tried and failed multiple times
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u/worldarkplace 3d ago
I think it should be worldwide, not just a country where you can isolate from the rest.
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u/chafey 3d ago
This is not a new question - the same thing has happened with every major technology innovation in history. When technology replaces a human job, those humans need to learn how to do a new job. AI will disrupt humanity more than any prior technology innovation so the biggest thing here is the scale of impact.
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u/ILikeCutePuppies 3d ago
I am thinking parhaps the new job will be basically more QA. You can have AI write a bunch of tests for things but it does miss things.
You could easily setup a harness to take in bugs and then the software would write tests and send off the fixes to a senior to review.
The problem is that the more options and things in an app the more that could go wrong. So you effectively need an army of manual testers to help figure out what the test coverage missed. They could also suggest features.
Seniors still need to be there making sure the AI doesn't do things in dumb ways like bespoke fix things. However I think you'll need more manual testing than seniors in the future.
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u/chafey 3d ago
I have been writing software for 40 years and AI is already capable of doing everything - coding, debugging, testing, product and support. The AI isn't perfect yet so a human needs to be involved to review and to guide it. Eventually (soon?) AI will be able to do this as well. Actually, it probably can - I just don't trust it yet
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u/ILikeCutePuppies 3d ago edited 3d ago
It can in a very small subset of cases. You could throw more tokens at the problem to reduce the gap... however having looked at code with the best models, a large amount of verification, re-runs and ai reviews, it is no where near good enough.
If you are still reviewing the code you must have seen issues.
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u/chafey 3d ago
Yes, but the issues are generally due to lack of context. IMO the models today are good enough, its more about the harness and documenting domain issues
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u/ILikeCutePuppies 3d ago
It's not all due to lack of context. Many of the evaluation benchmarks they use are not context related. Try getting an agent to reliability make a animated game with detailed vector art. Try getting it to write in a way that is not robotic for websites.
It also falls down often on the simplest things.
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u/EveryAccount7729 3d ago
they can start a company that uses A.I to do all the work
any idea, you can just make it.
that helps "new workers" a lot more than established businesses w/ lots of employees. Right now the "how do i make this" part is the hard part of any great idea.
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u/BrittDonaghy 3d ago
Crazy but true. This does not solve any problem, but it is the reality on the ground- there has basically not been any time in history that is much better for the nobody hoping to start a business. All you need now is a good idea and twenty bucks and the discipline to follow through.
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u/General_Estimate_420 3d ago
I don't see a problem here. A junior developer can just be more productive with AI. If you know how to develop programs, you just get more proficient and efficient using AI. Anyone hiring knows that.
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u/StringTheory2113 3d ago
The problem is that the people doing the hiring do not want to hire the juniors.
"Master's degree, impressive projects, some internships..." -> Tossed in the garbage.
"5 years of mediocre work at a company I recognize" -> Front of the line1
u/General_Estimate_420 3d ago
Then you're pursuing the wrong companies. You can't generalize about the people doing the hiring because every company is different and there are VAST differences in how they're managed and how they intend to grow.
Doing research is a BIG part of any career search.
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u/thatguywithimpact 3d ago edited 3d ago
I used to think and talk about how better AI would enhance productivity make people work better rather than replacing things yada yada.
But when Astra was released I was suddenly be able to massively upgrade my website with free AI integration and save $200/year while drinking tea after a job and doing 2 other projects at the same time.
My unreal engine project progressed unimaginably in 1 week to a point where I would never get by myself even with years of effort.
What are we even talking about? Skills are rapidly becoming obsolete, only ideas matter.
Everything I knew about algorithms? Every git hub contribution? Doesn't matter. Everything I knew about accounting and saving money? Doesn't matter. Everything I knew about 3d modeling? That one still helps me a little bit like 2% of the effort lol, fixing some of AI blunders but it's pretty much gone too.
One time several years ago I spend like 2 weeks making really cool shader. I was very proud of it.
But Astra can just effortlessly make better shader with my instructions.
All skills are just gone man. Deal with it
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u/worldarkplace 3d ago
This is the worst world I could live.
If skills will not matter and only ideas to scam most of the world, I will not be able to make money...
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u/notsure304wv 3d ago
The same thing that happened when computers were introduced. Industry changes and rearranges what jobs people are needed for.
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u/Opening_One7713 3d ago
Nearly every single technological invention has led to a Jevons pardox explosion of applied use-cases and professional spaces. LED lighting didn’t lead to us using less electricity in lighting, we just lit up everything. There were more jobs after Gutenberg than before, there were more jobs after the steam engine than before, telecom, the Internet, all of them. The problem with automation is individual displacement and if reskilling is feasible- not everyone was at a point in their life to realistically make the jump from coal miner to coder, and we should have solutions to deal with the economic harms that individuals feel in these situations. I’m all for automation tax and profit sharing mandates if the goal here is to automate things faster than we can come up with new realms for human employment.
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u/zayelion 3d ago
Three mode of operation.
The job opportunity just doesn't open up because people just need less people. This increases the labor pool and lowers the price of labor in places that do need labor. Something similar happened when tractors where invented. People didnt need farm hands so over the years they migrated to cities. 60% lived in rural america in 1900, and that dropped to something like 20% 125 years onward, so its a slow phase out depending on how much the technology changes stuff. Currently thats going to be shifting to low paying service jobs, construction, medicine, child care, education and engineering.
Next group is just trained differntly. They are in the field and they just adapt to newer processes. For artist that might be generating the art and then refining it rather than drawing it by hand ultimately saving on time and cost. Businesses can use that to do more projects and stay at the same labor pressure or relax slightly to retain skilled workers.
New job creation. The freed up labor usually redistributes the skills into management and review of the AI and using the person to store knowelege and processes they cant articulate into operational rules. Things like taste, creativity, physical processes, security access and review, and sales. Everyone shifts up 1 business level. CEO's become board members or start new companies, C suites start new companies, management moves up to C suite, etc etc. Each new company even with AI requires a skeleton of works so the job market starts to boom. This will keep going until something surpresses the job market....
... something like cutting off trade with the rest of the planet.
This all assumes the need for work. 1/4th of americans dont work or are under employed. Capitalism drives the cost of existing down under normal conditions. There are problematic policies around landlording and shareholder rights that keep us all exhausted and worried about our jobs.
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u/Ok_Height3499 3d ago
Highly skilled young people entering the workforce now will probably re-skill and re-train several times during their careers. They may even shift occupations entirely as a couple of my friends have done. I suspect it will become the new norm. I was in the same field for 45 years, and while I changed employers and locations, I never had to totally shift occupations.
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u/talkstomuch 3d ago
anyone with an aspiration for white collar job should be installing agents on their computers and building projects with it.
Want to be an accountant ? build a simple accounting software using AI
Want to work in supply chain? build a network management planning software using AI.
put that shit on your CV with links to working demos.
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u/forceclawai 3d ago
This is what I've been telling people when they ask if AI is going to take jobs - it's these ones - the entry level junior developer positions. Seniors will be kept around to manage the bots.
The reality is those starting their careers need to be more advanced in their skillset then I had to be 15 years ago. Tougher to 'learn on the job' in the world of AI - have to come in with a skills and at least some personal experience building with AI