Junior Developer Hiring Is Drying Up and Nobody Knows the Endgame

An HN thread titled 'No Juniors Today, No Seniors in 2031' is making the rounds, arguing that companies have stopped hiring junior engineers and that this will create a talent gap in five to seven years. The data behind the claim is thin, just LinkedIn and Indeed listings since late 2024, but the discussion is sharp. Several commenters noted that companies have cycled through junior hiring freezes before, in 2016, 2020, and 2023, and seniors kept arriving anyway. Others pointed out that the real issue is not the math but the message being sent to people considering CS as a career.

Separately, an NYT piece on tech worker morale drew HN attention, describing plunging morale as layoffs mount. And a thread on whether CS is still a good career path got pushback, with commenters noting that companies are laying off experienced developers by the thousands while publications run 'great time to study CS' pieces.

The pattern is a sector going through a genuine identity crisis about who it needs and what those people should look like. AI is being used as cover for cost cuts that would have happened anyway in a slower market, but the AI rationale makes the cuts feel more permanent and harder to argue against.