Wo kommen die Seniors her?

In 2023, three of my students split up at a career fair and visited 87 companies. At every booth, they asked the same question: any jobs in AI or machine learning?

Only 3 companies said yes.

They left asking a different question: what do we even apply for?

In the end, they took junior software developer roles and picked up machine learning along the way.

That seat was their entry into the field.

And that entry is now disappearing too.

Give a senior developer AI, and they get 30 to 50 percent more efficient. So companies ask a fair question: why hire a junior at all?

I understand the reasoning.

But juniors are the only place seniors come from.

You become one through years of experience and mistakes, sitting next to someone better than you.

Every junior seat cut today is a senior missing in five years.

I know because I sat in that seat.

After my apprenticeship, I started a front-end job.

On day one, they handed me a web design and said: make a web page out of this. I panicked.

A senior friend sat next to me, showed me how he worked, and we went back and forth.

Within six months, I was delivering nonstop.

Once I was stuck for four days on something as small as centering a div in CSS.

I dug through Stack Overflow and posted my own questions when nothing worked. When I finally solved it, I felt like a champion.

That is what really disappears.

The patience you only build by being stuck, and the time to actually get unstuck.

How do you sit with a problem for four days when everything needs to be done by tomorrow?

If a student joins a dev team today, there are barely any tasks left for them. The senior just says, "I can quickly close that."

I genuinely do not know how they will get their opportunity.