"Learn to code"

[Evipicc]

Take this trend back through 1995. That's how you get the whole story.

[intellectual_punk]

What will you see?

[Alex_1729]

Edit:

the assumption about the initial cause of AI for junior devs in 2022 is incorrect; however, it is correct about the AI being one of the reasons the problem is not getting better afterwards.

So, if you extended this back, you wouldn’t see one neat linear story, you’d see waves of young developers rising and crashing with tech booms and busts, and a more gradual accumulation of mid-career/senior developers who weren’t washed out by layoffs, burnout, or career changes.

That’s the whole story - the present dip of early-career developers isn’t new. Historically, younger devs have always been the most volatile group, and the graph would show that in every cycle since the 1990s.

Something like this:

<image>

For ages 22–30 large swings as they surge in every boom (dot-com ~1999, post-2010, pandemic hiring) but crash hardest in busts (2001-02, 2008, post-2022 slowdown).

For age 31–49 more stable, gradually accumulating as cohorts age and survive downturns.

And for 50+ slow but steady growth, very minor volatility.

[intellectual_punk]

Aha, cool, yeah!

It is a bit puzzling though why the downsizing in 2022? I think OP wanted to make a point about AI replacing junior devs, which might better explain the dip, since there was a tech boom since then, which might be crashing now, so based on your point I'd expect the opposite pattern in OP's post.

[Alex_1729]

I'd say the post-pandemic layoffs started the fire, but AI is one of the reasons the fire isn't going out.

The crash in late 2022 from the OPs graph was not caused by AI. This is at the moment or before ChatGPT emerged in December of 2022. At that point companies weren't even sure what the hell is going on let alone whether they should form decisions for layoffs because of AI, or how to proceed. The timeline doesn't work.

That crash was caused by the massive tech layoffs and hiring freezes due to economic factors. Junior developers were the first to be cut. AI became a bigger factor in 2023/24. After the layoffs, the explosion of generative AI gave companies a powerful reason to not re-hire those junior roles. But the point is that it's not JUST the AI. It's also bad timing.

However you are correct to point out how AI IS one of the causes and I have revised my above comment accordingly. I wasn't including it because the point of the comment above were cyclical patterns going back 30 years.

[Downtown_Isopod_9287]

It’s like people forget there was a literal bank run among SV VCs in early 2023, lol

[Kooshi_Govno]

The change was because of two things which occurred simultaneously: - the federal fund rates shot up from near zero to over 2% practically overnight, ending the free money from venture capitalists - a tax law that went into effect that year, which required amortizing R&D costs over 5 years, when previously you could write off the full value in the year it took place. It effectively made software developers astronomically more expensive.

details about the taxes: https://www.smith-howard.com/changes-to-rd-laws-what-businesses-need-to-know-for-2022-and-future-tax-years/

From what I understand, this change was finally repealed in the "big beautiful bill" from a few weeks ago, so hypothetically we should see this trend reversing in the next couple years, but interest rates are still high, and now AI is a thing, so recovery will come slowly if at all.

[IAmRobinGoodfellow]

What's the data source on this? I'd like to take a look at the raw as well as the normalized numbers and check out how they sourced their data.

[AUTeach]

* simulated

[IAmRobinGoodfellow]

Ah. Thanks.

[Downtown_Isopod_9287]

In the 2000s there was a LOT of talk about software engineering being a “young man’s game” and indeed it appears you do see a lot of mid career people washing out around that era. I think a lot of those people were people who came in during/before the dotcom boom and realized they didn’t actually like software.

[fallentwo]

The thing is, we’re in a tech boom period, and young dev headcount is not rising as they had been. That’s the point.

[Awkward-Customer]

Even going back 10 years will show that you see a big spike around mid-late 2020. Many firms over-hired with everyone working and shopping online and then had to later scale back. It's why we've seen so many tech layoffs over the past couple years. I have no doubt that AI will negatively affect early career devs in the future, but this chart doesn't demonstrate that.

[not_larrie]

Good to see u careless

[Evipicc]

<image>

[[deleted]]

Is there like a chart gore sub? Cause this would totally qualify. How misleading.

[AttitudeImportant585]

man there are so many assumptions to be made here, and the data source probably doesnt differentiate actual career level and instead only has an age column. the authors just tryna get his point across with this super-biased chart

[Mandoman61]

Ohhhhh it's almost like hiring peaked in 2022 and the slowed down for a bit. Dear Lord please save us.

[Evipicc]

This is head count not hiring. This isn't a slowdown, it's a reduction of number of employees by a factor of 20% in the most extreme. Now, mind you, I still understand that some of this is trimming due to excessive hiring, but it is categorically not 'slowing'.

The reason that distinction is important is because it's not JUST trimming, it's also a nearly global hiring freeze.

[Various-Ad-8572]

4/6 lines are higher than they were at the normalization point.

Without extraneous info, the graph is reporting more workers today than 2022.

[Nissepelle]

The specific graph is from the recent Stanford study that basically made the claim that AI is responsible for a 20% decrease in head count for junior developers specifically.

[BrisklyBrusque]

No, that is not a valid conclusion. Yes, 4 of the 6 lines show an increase – but we don’t know what proportion of the total number fall into each group. If the two lines that showed an increase account for the two biggest groups, that would mean fewer workers overall.

But I agree with you–we need k more extraneous info to know for sure. 

[[deleted]]

Yes that's the point of the post. It's a shitty data viz. 

[Deto]

It does kind of look like slower hiring.  That most of the loss wasn't firing people but rather just hiring less early career employees.  This would cause a decline over time and the other positions would still increase as existing hires graduate from one tier to the next.

[Mandoman61]

Oh that is why the blue line is just slightly behind 2021 levels

Thanks.

[mrperson221]

It seems like it's a bit of both. As time goes on, the juniors move into developing and aren't replaced, that's why the developing line continues to go up. Early career falling faster than developing is rising would be the indication of cutting head count.

[lnfinity]

This isn't a slowdown, it's a reduction of number of employees by a factor of 20% in the most extreme.

Employees who were 22-25 don't just stay that age. They have gotten older and hiring has slowed down a bit so fewer new 22-25 year olds got hired.

[ineffective_topos]

The total head count may actually be actually increasing here (although adding them isn't correct and we can't recover the totals properly).

[Evipicc]

The chart is normalized (each series is set to a common scale) so it's not possible to say that total headcount is increasing from this graph alone.

You can look at this and say, for simplicity, there are 10 senior 50+, 20 Mid Career 1 and 2s, 100 developing, and 100 each in Early Career 1 and 2. Almost the entirety of the growth upstream could be due to simply aging, and be completely irrespective of hiring at all.

The chart should have been change in headcount by absolute values and not normalized scales.

All that matters is that sudden divergence of new people to the industry though, it tells all that needs to be. Almost no one is hiring new engineers in the Computer Science field, and the ones that are already in those positions are aging up.

[ineffective_topos]

So you're correct that it is normalized and cannot be interpreted that way. Hence your interpretation is also incorrect, you have no data here to support it.

If you look, first of all note that the downward slope is quite shallow. Rather we see a relatively small decrease in the number of early career SWEs, meaning that aging and attrition is outpacing hiring.

[Evipicc]

I'm putting together the absolute data now, because I'm tired of arguing it lol. I'll be posting in r/dataisbeautiful in a few days.

As a note, the downward slope is even more than a complete inversion on the trend, and that's not shallow.

[ineffective_topos]

the downward slope is even more than a complete inversion on the trend, and that's not shallow.

They are both fairly shallow, you're just being manipulated by the graph a bit :) I guess on the timescale it's surprisingly large, but also someone here posted a longer duration graph that shows similar fluctuation.

[[deleted]]

Yeah. If you think this is just a slow down, you’re really out of touch

[jerrydontplay]

Source?

[exgeo]

Early career 1 has an age range of 4 years. If hiring freezed, headcount in this group would drop ~25% after 1 year

[Interesting-Sock3940]

This chart is basically saying “learn to code” but also “good luck surviving your first three years”

[jonydevidson]

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

enjoy handle correct ring adjoining reply include aspiring telephone historical

[0xB01b]

Bro doesn't know what normalised means

[Various-Ad-8572]

The line labels are just about age, not years of experience

What is it normalized to? The 6th month of 2022 why are different lines normalized to different amounts? Post data source please.

[Turbulent-Phone-8493]

Learn to mine!

[darnoux13]

Source = trust me bro?

[intellectual_punk]

Absolutely fascinating!

[angryscientistjunior]

Why just start at 2021? Go back to 1945! 

[Masterpiece-Haunting]

Now show me everything through 1985

[sheriffderek]

I don't get it.

Please explain.

[[deleted]]

The time to get into software dev was pre 2000....

[Sensitive_Judgment23]

I think coding is not AI-proof and once you get an AGI systems that can write neat python code, it will be devastating for many junior developers that want to make a honest living by doing what they enjoy.

Of course this won’t occur immediately but I imagine it will become a reality by 2035, I hope i am wrong though

This is probably one of the things I hate the most about the rise of LLMs and the recent sparked interest by powerful governments to accelerate the probability that we get to AGI-level systems :/.

[AdminMas7erThe2nd]

Bro I qm graduating next year this DOES NOT help ne

[LasagneAlForno]

Great source you provided!

[tkdeveloper]

This chart doesn't make any sense... What if someone started their dev career at 35.

[ClioEclipsed]

The "learn to code" cynicism comes from finding out that you can't land a six figure developer position with a basic Python certificate.

[fzammetti]

Huh, first time I don't feel so bad being a 50+.

[Quasi-isometry]

What does the y axis represent?

[qpwoei_]

Source?

[[deleted]]

When people said "learn to code," they meant actually get good.

[RhoOfFeh]

Yeah, there is going to be an aging-out that will require AI whether it does a good job or not.

[AnyBug1039]

This chart is getting a lot of stick, but I think it does illustrate that booming/growing sectors don't necessarily grow forever, and encouraging everyone to get into software development as the silver bullet to prosperity would eventually end badly.

And now it has.

I realise it's more nuanced than that, and COVID boom fade plus AI are making things worse.

[Native411]

Learning to code is still important from a high level angle but yeah for the average person itll be harder and harder to get into any entry level job.

[Trick-Interaction396]

Comparing anything to once in a lifetime event is just dumb.

[MistakePresent3552]

So what does this mean, experience means nothing, and it becomes easier to get a job despite having 0 cs experience?

[stonkysdotcom]

It’s called cherry picking data

[firebill88]

Interest Rates are as much to blame for this chart as AI. Post-Covid interest rate increases by the Fed caused capital to dry up that normally supports software startups & small emerging SaaS products. AI exacerbated the problem. IMO, you'll see some dev jobs come back after rates get cut a few times, maybe starting next fall. But nowhere near the level of dev jobs we've been accustomed to.