AI has torched the market for junior programmers
TLDR
Junior programmer employment has declined 19% since late 2022 while older developers thrived, with entry-level software postings down 28%, but simultaneously a surge of 36 million new GitHub accounts and 80% year-over-year growth in iOS app submissions shows that coding capability is spreading to non-programmers in other job roles. The collapse in traditional junior programming jobs contrasts with an explosion in people writing software outside traditional developer titles, as marketing managers and product managers now use AI coding tools. The profession faces a critical gap: the apprenticeship model that trained senior engineers is broken, creating a potential shortage of experienced developers unless companies redesign junior roles around specification and customer contact rather than code production.
Why it matters
The job market for computer programmers is quickly falling, but the market for jobs where the work product is judgment about what code should exist is growing. AI is primarily eating jobs where the work product is code written to spec.
