Everyone thought AI would replace junior engineers. We’re hiring more of them

Eliminating junior engineers means in the future we won’t have senior leaders with judgment, intuition, and a solid understanding of AI-native ways of building.

The biggest hiring myth in tech is that AI is making junior engineers obsolete. The logic seems sound: AI can write code, so why hire people to write more of it? Junior engineers have always learned on the job, fixing bugs and shipping small features until they build real judgment. Now that coding agents can handle much of that work, companies assume they can cut off the bottom rungs of the career ladder.