Is AI going to take over junior software dev jobs?
Imagine you’re a junior dev in a company. Let’s assume you’re currently doing minor tasks like changing button colors, converting Figma designs to HTML/JSX, CRUD APIs and stuff like that simple and “easy” work once you know the basics of React, HTML, CSS & a bit of backend knowledge related to MVC & DBs.
Here’s a question: can AI do this? Yes, of course. But that’s not the point. Junior devs aren’t hired because the task is impossible to do with AI. They’re hired for a very simple reason and that is called time.
Team A can build a big project with or without the junior dev, but with a junior dev on the team, they can build it a bit faster as they can simply parallelize the work accordingly.
Although the dev will follow whatever instructions are given and some back-and-forth communication will be required, the process is still more efficient.
Giving the same task to AI might seem faster, but it requires prompting, proofreading the code, running it, and verifying the output.
This consumes a significant amount of a senior developer’s time—which shouldn’t be wasted on mundane tasks. Sure, senior devs assist juniors, but replacing a junior dev would mean not utilizing a senior dev’s time optimally.
Here’s a small analogy to illustrate my point:
It takes 2 people with 2 shovels 1 hour to dig a 3-foot hole.
Now comes a crane, which can do the same in 5 minutes—but it also requires a crane operator, a specialist.
The crane saves time, but can be expensive depending on where you live. More importantly, it might not be feasible to use a crane for small holes.
This is similar to the junior-senior dev relationship. A junior dev handles small tasks to learn and understand the system, while a senior dev builds and maintains & refines the system to ensure smooth operations of the system.
At the end of the day, AI is just a tool that requires specialists to use it optimally. Otherwise, it can lead to disastrous bugs and poor user experiences.
There’s a saying in hindi:
“Bandar ke haath mein bandook dena”
Which translates to giving a gun to a monkey. Monkeys can surely shoot, but it’ll be inaccurate and possibly harmful to themselves and those nearby.
By monkeys, I mean non technical folks who try to do technical stuff with AI
By people I mean the users using on the software built by these monkeys
AI is a perfect companion for everyone, and all the productivity claims are valid but only for simple tasks that don’t require deep knowledge or expertise.
When it comes to anything that requires deep knowledge and problem-solving, AI fails horribly. Deep thinking is still something only humans are capable of. As of now atleast in April 2025
Most of the time, we don’t even know what we want, so explaining it clearly is hard itself, Let alone crafting a good prompt and expecting AI to generate something useful without clear input is not yet possible.
That’s it for today. I’m writing this after reading Shopify’s leaked internal email stating that teams need to justify why something can’t be done with AI before hiring a new employee.
Ref: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/shopify-says-no-new-hires-unless-ai-cant-do-the-job-81c34f1e