The title is a bit misleading. Reading the article, the argument seems to be that entry-level applicants (are expected to) have the highest AI literacy, so they want them to drive AI adoption.

IBM has cut ~8,000 jobs in the past year or so.

Sounds like business as usual to me, with a little sensationalization.

Is this for their in-house development or for their consulting services?

Because the latter would still be indicative of AI hurting entry level hiring since it may signal that other firms are not really willing to hire a full time entry level employee whose job may be obsoleted by AI, and paying for a consultant from IBM may be a lower risk alternative in case AI doesn't pan out.

One might ask what value seniors hold if their expertise of the junior stage is obsolete. Maybe the new junior will just be reigning in llm that does the work and senior level knowledge and compensation rots away as those people retire without replacement.

And if it is for consulting, I doubt very serious they will based in the US. You can’t be priced competitive hiring an entry level consultant in the US and no company is willing to pay the bill rate for US based entry level consultants unless their email address is @amazon.com or @google.com.

Source: current (full time) staff consultant at a third party cloud consulting firm and former consultant (full time) at Amazon.

Why would Amazon bring on a full-time consultant instead of just hiring you?

My partner is also a consultant and one client was Google. I’m also confused about the exact reason why they didn’t just hire someone.

Interesting signal from IBM. The "AI will replace all junior devs" narrative never accounted for the fact that you still need humans who understand the business domain, can ask the right questions, and can catch when the AI is confidently wrong. Turns out institutional knowledge doesn't just materialize from a model — you need people learning on the job to build it.

"software engineers will spend less time on routine coding—and more on interacting with customers"

Ahh, what could possibly go wrong!

Customer interaction has imo always been one of the most important parts in good engineering organizations. Delegating that to Product Managers adds unnecessary friction.

Why is that bad? You write better code when you actually understand the business domain and the requirement. It's much easier to understand it when you get it direct from the source than filtered down through dozens of product managers and JIRA tickets.

Not sure why this is being downvoted. It’s spot on imo. Engineers who don’t want to understand the domain and the customers won’t be as effective in an engineering organization as those who do.

It always baffles me when someone wants to only think about the code as if it exists in a vacuum. (Although for junior engineers it’s a bit more acceptable than for senior engineers).

Programmers have an unfortunate tendancy to be too honest!

I’m a people person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNuu9CpdjIo

Interesting given the current age discrimination lawsuit:

https://www.cohenmilstein.com/case-study/ibm-age-discriminat...

Another one? What is it with IBM, they must really save lots of money in a way no one else has figured out by firing people at 50yo. This is like the 3rd or 4th one i've heard from them.

Probably not on the IBM jobs site yet, where the number of entry level jobs is low compared to the size of the company (~250k):

https://www.ibm.com/careers/search?field_keyword_18[0]=Entry...

Total: 240

United States: 25

India: 29

Canada: 15

Aren't those general jobs opening. Like junior swe only needs a single generic posting for all positions

Perhaps I'm being cynical, but could they be leaving out some detail? Perhaps they're replacing even more older workers with entry level workers than before? Maybe the AI makes the entry level workers just as good-- and much cheaper.

Bold move.

Not because it's wrong, but because it risks initiating the collapse of the AI bubble and the whole "AI is gonna replace all skilled work, any day now, just give us another billion".

Seems like IBM can no longer wait for that day.

Is IBM invested big in LLMs? I don't get the impression they have much to lose there.

Their CEO already said what he's thinking about all the spending [0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124324

Good. Nobody needs to rip that bandaid off. Might as well be IBM.

Yeah, they are only 114 years old. How they can have the knowledge to stay afloat in trying times like this?

To a non-technical individual IBM is still seen as a reputable brand (their consulting business would've been bankrupt long ago otherwise) and they will absolutely pay attention.

Tripling entry-level hiring is a good plan.

> Some executives and economists argue that younger workers are a better investment for companies in the midst of technological upheaval.

IBM, in the midst of a tech upheaval? They are so dysfunctional, it's the core of why I left

> In the HR department, entry-level staffers now spend time intervening when HR chatbots fall short, correcting output and talking to managers as needed, rather than fielding every question themselves.

The job is essentially changing from "You have to know what to say, and say it" to "make sure the AI says what you know to be right"

With the workforce may happen like with DRAM and NAND flash memories: unexpected demand in one side leaving without enough offer in other sides.

Doubt it. Unless we go through another decade of ZIRP tied to a newly invented hyped technology that lacks specialists, and discovering new untapped markets, there's not gonna be any massive demand spike of junior labor in tech that can't be met.

The "learn to code" saga has run its course. Coder is the new factory worker job where I live, a commodity.

[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46995146

Thanks - we-ve merged that thread hither.