If I look strictly at speed, hiring a junior engineer right now does not seem beneficial.

An AI agent can create boilerplate, write scripts, and documentation faster than any entry-level human. It doesn’t sleep and it costs practically nothing.

The logic says stop hiring them. But that logic is completely wrong.

When a bad config takes down production, the AI doesn’t feel it. It doesn’t learn from it’s mistakes or change how to approach architecture for the next time.

Juniors do. They accumulate scars. That pain is exactly what turns them into the senior engineers. AI suggests patterns, but it doesn’t internalize the tradeoffs. It doesn’t understand why we avoid a certain configuration, only that it exists.

I don’t hire juniors to write perfect syntax from scratch anymore. I hire them to make sense of systems.

I need them to look at what the AI wrote and ask: “Why does this work?” and “Where is it going to fail?”

The role has shifted. They aren’t just writing code; they are systems thinkers who use AI to move faster.

If I stop hiring juniors, my pipeline collapses. I end up with a top-heavy team and nobody ready to step up.

AI didn’t eliminate the junior engineer. It just changed how they grow.