The Bar for Junior Developers Has Never Been Higher
So why is it harder to get in?
I’ve been building something new for backend engineers.
It’s not just another course.
It’s designed to solve the “I don’t know what I don’t know” problem - and it also teaches how backend engineers actually work with AI. It has videos and interactions.
It’s currently, check it out here: https://cwroby.com/Z7qLm2Xv9Ra
We are currently in an era with more junior developers than ever before.
And that raises a real question - maybe even a concern. Because while there are more junior developers than ever, the bar to entry is also higher than ever.
This is fundamentally due to AI and its impact on software development as a whole.
The bar used to be low.
The bar to entry for a software developer was once simple. Do you know how to code? If you’re a backend engineer, can you create a CRUD app with API endpoints?
If you had that foundation, you could build skills on top of it. That was the deal.
That is changing fast. Large language models and coding tools like Claude Code and Codex are driving this shift.
Prompting changed everything.
The reason is prompting.
You can prompt an agentic coding tool to create something simple, like a CRUD app. You don’t necessarily need to learn how to build it yourself to get something working.
As tools like Claude Code and Codex replace simple tasks, you need to offer more value to get hired. It has to be more than “I can write basic code.”
On top of that, you still need to understand what that code is doing. Just because an AI can write it for you doesn’t mean you can skip understanding the fundamentals. That part hasn’t changed.
The New Baseline is Bigger
The backend engineering field is changing. It used to focus on just knowing how to create a CRUD application. Now, it’s growing into something much bigger.
Now you may need to learn how to create a backend system using Kafka. You may need to understand why Kafka exists. You may need to containerize your application and create a Docker image. Then deploy it all on AWS.
Large language models can likely manage much of this, based on your technical depth. But if we’re discussing the new barrier to entry, this is the knowledge that will soon be expected.
And I know this because I’m part of multiple hiring teams. I’ve spoken with many junior engineers who are trying to break in. It always feels like they’re behind because of how much they need to know just to get started.
But knowledge has never been more accessible.
Here’s the other side of this.
It’s never been easier to have knowledge right in front of you.
AI and large language models can give us information that used to take textbooks, expert knowledge, or hours of online searching.
There were limited resources on YouTube. Limited resources when it came to courses. But now all of this is either free or extremely cheap.
The Balance
So yes, the bar has risen to get in. I think it’s similar to the difficulty of the lower bar that was there before. The difference is the bar is higher, but knowledge is easier to get.
The expectation is higher. But so is the access.
Junior developers who learn to use these tools effectively will succeed. They won’t just skip learning; they’ll learn faster.
Cheers friends,
Eric Roby
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Yes well said!, accessing knowledge get easier than ever, so the expectation level increased than ever before