The fact that we're slowly removing the apprenticeship layer and passing it off as "productivity gains" should be far more alarming. Just imagine. The kind of work that is best suited for AI, such as boilerplate code, simple CRUD endpoints, and basic component wiring, is actually similar to the work that helps in training junior developers. It was not that we were working on those tasks because they were difficult, but rather because they are the tasks that build our understanding of how software works. The pipeline problem Every senior developer alive today was once a junior who learned by doing boring work. You wired up forms. You wrote repetitive tests. You copy-pasted patterns until they became intuition. Today, companies perceive equivalent work and ask “AI is able to do this quickly, why recruit a junior? Job ads reveal the reality: relative to senior posts, the number of junior developer positions has decreased by 2024 and has continued to decline to 2025.…