Who Will Become the Next Senior? How Generative AI Erodes the Development Pathway in Software Engineering
Computers and SocietySoftware Engineering
Summary
The authors studied how Generative AI (GenAI) is changing the way junior software engineers learn and grow into senior engineers. They found that GenAI shifts early work towards tasks usually done by seniors using AI, causing juniors to miss out on important learning struggles. This change is reinforced in classrooms and workplaces, creating a gap in understanding between juniors and seniors. The authors suggest that careful planning is needed in schools and companies to keep training future senior engineers effectively.
Authors
Sumin Yu, Taesup Moon
Abstract
Generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping software engineering, raising concerns about how the development pathway through which juniors become seniors is being eroded. While macro statistics show a decline in junior hiring and controlled studies demonstrate the effects of AI on individual task performance, the mechanisms through which GenAI reshapes early-career development in real organizational and educational contexts have not been thoroughly examined. Through 14 semi-structured interviews with juniors at the threshold of entering software engineering and senior software engineers in South Korea, analyzed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, we reveal a foundational pattern of Absorption -- GenAI redirects entry-level work into senior-AI workflows -- and three consequences: (1) juniors losing the productive struggle through which expertise once developed; (2) the structural reproduction of this loss through collective normalization of GenAI use in university classrooms; and (3) the perceptual asymmetry between seniors and juniors that prevents either side from correcting these dynamics on their own. By extending learning theory and situated cognition to organizational and institutional scales, we argue that GenAI appears to be absorbing not just specific categories of tasks but also parts of the pathway through which the next generation of seniors is formed. Preserving this pathway will require deliberate institutional design across classrooms, workplaces, and the evaluation criteria for juniors.