AI broke the junior dev market. The fix is slow

TLDR's latest post (by Seldo) tracks what's happened to entry-level programming since ChatGPT arrived. The short version: AI tools ate the bottom of the stack. Tasks that used to go to a junior—boilerplate, CRUD, scaffolding, writing tests, turning a spec into a working app—are now handled by models for a few cents. Junior headcount shrinks. The jobs that remain are the ones a model can't do alone: understanding a vague client request, debugging something the model got wrong, and shipping code that fits the rest of the system.

The interesting part is how the market is adjusting. Salaries at the bottom haven't collapsed; they've just stopped growing. Companies aren't firing juniors wholesale—they're hiring fewer of them. The roles that survive pay a premium for the judgment call: knowing when to let the model do the work and when to override it. Meanwhile, the tools themselves are getting better, which means the bar keeps rising. What was junior work last year is already shifting toward mid-level.

For the Brown folks who are learning to code or already in the trenches, this isn't bad news—it's a signal. The apprenticeship model is still working; the apprenticeship just looks different now. You don't need to be the fastest at writing code; you need to be the one who can read the output, spot the mistakes, and make the call. That's the work a model can't do for you, and it's the work that will keep paying.

Why this matters for us: the kids learning to code in our communities still have a path forward—the jobs are changing, not disappearing, and the ones that pay well are the ones that require judgment, not just speed.