The Junior Engineer is Dead, Long Live the Junior Engineer

I've spoken to many junior people in tech complaining about how hard it is to get a job. This was a bit surprising to me given the state of the market being at all time highs.

The typical new grad engineer is worse than chatGPT at building real things.

There just isn't room for low-agency people anymore. The current failure modes in AI today are largely around high level instructions and nitty gritty implementation is now more trivial (for many domains). The CS new grad with no internships and 3 youtube tutorials on their resume is no longer a person worth hiring. This sudden shift in programming was bound to leave people confused and reddit posting about their woes.

Consider the level of management a junior engineer needs. Do they need more or less than management than a PM or senior engineer using Claude 3.5?

Comapnies will still hire junior engineers but the bar for autonomy and agency is now set higher. New grads trying to follow the playbook of new grads 2 years before them are in for a rude awakening.

So, what should a technical new grad do to get a job?

1. Be high-agency. Your resume is a reflection of this. Your life choices are a reflection of this.
2. Show you are intelligent (aka you have a high slope and hence worth the investment)
3. Build real things. The bar is set higher but the metaphorical pole-vaulting pole has never been bigger, better, or easier to use. If you're not building real things with today's availability, you really don't want to.