Without the hiring of early-in-career developers, the profession’s talent pipeline will collapse, and organizations will face a future without the next generation of experienced engineers.

Generative AI has fractured the economics of software engineering. Agentic coding assistants now give senior engineers an AI boost, multiplying their throughput, while imposing an AI drag on early-in-career (EiC) developers who lack the judgment and context to steer, verify, and integrate AI output. The result is a new incentive structure: Hire seniors, automate juniors. But without EiC hiring, the profession’s talent pipeline collapses, and organizations face a future without the next generation of experienced engineers.
Our thesis is simple: We must keep hiring EiC developers, accept that they initially reduce capacity, and deliberately design systems that make their growth an explicit organizational goal. The path forward is a culture of preceptorship at scale. We must enable senior mentorship with AI systems that capture reasoning, surface misconceptions, and turn daily work into teachable moments for EiC developers. This article explores how such systems can close the training gap and preserve the craft of software engineering in the age of AI.

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