AI, Juniors, and…
AI is changing the IT industry’s entry-level landscape. It reduces demand for juniors trained purely under the traditional apprenticeship model, but it does not eliminate the need for juniors altogether. What it changes is the baseline: new juniors are expected to work fluently with AI rather than work around it. This shift raises concerns about experience and continuity, especially as senior engineers retire. However, senior retirement itself is not the core risk. The real issue is how judgment, taste, and practical knowledge are formed and transferred. The traditional apprenticeship model still has real value. Engineers who have built systems end to end, debugged production failures, and lived with the consequences of technical decisions develop a sense of “better” that cannot be learned from prompts or outputs alone. This taste is shaped by cost, failure, and trade-offs. AI can amplify such judgment, but it cannot create it from nothing. At the same time, the old model does not…