This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience
A trip down memory lane
I still remember my final interview.
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I find your testimony very interesting and highly relevant. Your feedback clearly shows that prioritizing people makes sense, and unfortunately, too many companies forget this nowadays.
Thanks Pascal. I have indeed witnessed the benefits of nurturing people over time. This played out over years, not months which is unforutnately the time scope a lot of companies are narrowing down on.
And that’s what makes the difference. The company has invested (and your work is the return on that investment) — those that push people out after just a few months don’t build employee loyalty; they’re closer to code factories than anything else.
Indeed, well said. With code being easier to produce, the human factor will likely be an increasingly competitive edge.
Spot on - companies who stop hiring juniors "because AI" is a knee-jerk reaction, and it's short-sighted - I wholly believe in the value good juniors can bring!
(I also believe in what AI can potentially bring - but only when used methodically and intelligently ...)
Exactly! It does feel short-sighted, it feels like a lot of companies are using AI as an excuse to go through general cost cutting without looking bad in front of their shareholders.
But the long term positive impacts of keeping a healthy hiring pipeline for juniors/trainees are non negligible. But harder to quantify which is why these often go through cost cutting in the short term.
Yeah well they'll change course when the downsides become apparent, for now it's mainly hype/gut feeling driven ...
Yes, a classic. We have seen that pattern over and over...
History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes.
This really highlights something a lot of companies miss — junior performance isn’t random, it’s designed.
Where I’ve seen juniors accelerate fastest, there’s always:
Without that, even motivated people struggle to scale.
AI is starting to change this dynamic quite a bit — not by removing the need for juniors, but by making it easier to build those environments at scale.
Feels like the real opportunity now is designing systems that turn early talent into high performers faster.
Out of curiosity — did the structure of the program or the mentorship culture have more impact for you?
I am glad to hear that your son has this mindset. Curiosity, work ethic, and a willingness to keep learning are fundamental!
I agree, the learning design is definitely key. The program I went through had us rotate through various teams in our first year to get exposure to different problem spaces. We would also have tasks to complete and group exercises which were not directly tied to a team but at a program level, which allowed us to train our skills and make mistakes without a direct impact on any team or end customer. The content was structured with a clear onboarding, multiple checkpoints throughout the year and assessments.
To answer your question, it was indeed the program itself that was very valuable to me. However the people around me were also a huge positive factor as there was a sense of community and camaraderie in learning and struggling together.
I find your take on using AI to accelerate junior learning and contribution a very interesting one. I imagine that striking a balance between structure and speed is crucial here.
Have you seen any valuable use applications of AI for junior training? When I did my junior training, AI wasn't widely adopted so I am curious.
That sounds like a really well-designed program — especially the mix of structured learning and “safe to fail” environments. That’s something a lot of organisations still struggle to get right. In my experience, a genuine “no blame” culture is critical to making that kind of environment work.
On the AI side, what’s been interesting is how it can support that same structure rather than replace it.
Some of the more valuable use cases I’m seeing are:
Helping juniors break down complex tasks into structured steps (almost like a guided thinking process)
Acting as a “first pass” reviewer — giving feedback before something reaches a manager
Generating scenario-based exercises quickly, so people can practice without impacting live environments
Supporting knowledge recall in context, rather than relying on static training materials
But you’re absolutely right — the balance is key.
Without structure, AI just speeds up confusion.
With the right structure, it can genuinely accelerate confidence and contribution.
I’ve been exploring this more recently, particularly around how AI can support structured training in areas like safety and compliance — where getting things wrong has real consequences.
Still early days for the AI part of course, but it’s a really interesting space.
Those are valuable use cases indeed! Thanks for sharing.
I can imagine companies could get a ton of value from internal tooling that compounds their compnay culture and engineering best practices and offers it to juniors to train with for cases suc as knowledge recall, code reviews, explanation of tasks etc.
That’s a great way of putting it — “compounding culture and best practices” is exactly where the real value starts to show.
What’s interesting is that once you frame it that way, it becomes less about training as a one-off activity, and more about building a system that continuously reinforces how the organisation actually operates.
That’s where AI starts to get really useful — not just generating content, but helping to:
capture and standardise internal knowledge
turn that into structured, repeatable learning
and reinforce it in context as people are working
It effectively shortens the gap between “how things are supposed to be done” and “how people actually learn to do them”.
I’ve been exploring this more recently from a compliance and training perspective — where consistency and accuracy really matter — and it feels like there’s a lot of untapped potential here.
Out of interest, have you seen any companies doing this well in practice?
Yes exactly! From my network and previous company experience, more internal tooling is used making use of LLMs to capture and standardise internal knowledge. Imagine a company having its own Wiki knowledge base, From that knowledge base you can hook in custom built internal tooling. AI is good at copying existing tooling. So why not have your own internal Jira with only the features your company needs.
Another interesting phenomenon I am noticing is that companies are shifting hiring strategy to capture talent including junior talent with potential. Some strategies are sponsoring hackathons and identifying talent there and also opening up office space to host builders events where people come to connect and demo their projects. This creates proximity to talent and natural connections for potential hires.
That sounds great! As a beginner, do they ask about experience more than skills in the interview?
They do test you generally on basic programming skills. In my case I had a couple of coding challenges to complete online which tested my knowledge of basic data algorithms. I also had a live pair programming interview. My tip here is to talk the interviewer through your thought process and ask questions if you get stuck. I couldn't solve one of the challenges but was open about it and attempted to solve it using the correct reasoning, which still allowed me to pass to the next round. Experience counts too, especially in the final rounds once you have already shown you have basic coding skills. It helps to be able to talk about personal projects built. This is what I honestly think gave me an edge back in the day compared to other candidates and landed me the job.
Oh... Thanks! That's very helpful! We just have to be skilled and open to the interviewer, in short...?
Learn basic skills, and if you get stuck on a technical interview question/challenge, admit you are not familiar with this concept but still attempt to solve it by thinking out loud and asking guiding questions. This shows logic, resilience and adaptation skills to the interviewer. It's better than just not attempting to solve the question at all.
Ideally you also have 1-2 quality personal projects to talk about.
That's reassuring! I'm actually already building projects — a SaaS landing page, a resume builder, a budget tracker. Hoping they count! 😄
You are on the right track! From personal experience, it is better to have fewer high quality projects that you can walkthrough in detail vs many smaller projects that you don't know in detail.
That's exactly what I'm focusing on! Quality over quantity. Thank you so much for taking the time — this genuinely means a lot! 🙏
Happy I could help! Anytime. Best of luck!
Thank you so much Julien, truly! 🙏 This community is amazing.
This resonates deeply especially the point about companies cutting junior roles because of AI productivity gains being a short-term decision.
There's an irony I've been thinking about a lot lately: AI is making senior engineers faster, but it's also quietly eroding the learning pipeline that creates senior engineers. Code review, debugging sessions, reading someone else's messy code that's where junior developers develop the instinct and judgment that no AI can hand them. If we automate all of that away, we don't just lose junior roles. We stop producing the next generation of seniors.
Your point about non-traditional backgrounds being an edge, not a weakness, is one I'd underline twice. The engineers I've seen ask the best why questions in code reviews are often the ones who came from product, finance, or other fields because they haven't been trained to accept technical decisions at face value.
Thanks for writing this it's a perspective the dev community needs to hear more loudly right now.
Thanks for validating some of my points and sharing your own experiences, Harsh. I do feel like more people in the dev community need to hear about the benefits of including juniors in the hiring pipeline. So many people are eager to build things and learn, employers should seize this opportunity.
The irony you described is real and I see it playing out already. Teams I know are hiring fewer juniors because agents handle the tasks juniors used to cut their teeth on. But those tasks were never about the output, they were about the learning. Writing a CRUD endpoint teaches you how the system fits together. Having an agent write it teaches you how to prompt. Those are not the same skill and in five years when those juniors were supposed to be mid-levels who actually understand the architecture there will be a gap that no agent can fill.
That gap will definitely be felt a few years down the line for a lot of teams...
honestly the ROI on juniors is so underrated bc they bring fresh eyes to problems that senior devs just autopilot through... plus watching someone level up bc of your mentorship hits different than any salary bump tbh
Couldn't agree more with your points.
It's an amazing feeling to watch someone you mentored grow and then see them mentor someone themselves further down the road.
This really resonates. As someone who transitioned from manufacturing engineering to app development, I can confirm that non-traditional backgrounds bring a unique problem-solving lens that pure CS grads sometimes miss. The ROI on investing in juniors compounds over years — cutting those roles for short-term AI gains is like eating your seed corn.
Agreed. I am glad this resonated with you. Your background sounds like it would indeed bring valuable insights and intuitions towards app development.
Great perspective, Julien! As a developer currently building my own project, I see this every day. The 'hunger to learn' and the fresh energy junior developers bring can truly transform a product. Sometimes we hit roadblocks with SEO or technical debt, but that drive to find a solution is what makes the difference. Thanks for sharing this
Thanks süleyman! I am glad this resonated with you.
And best of luck with your project! What is the project about? If you don't feel comfortable saying, no problem at all! I am just curious :)
You made an excellent point! The situation of the junior developer roles is major issues around the world at the moment.
Thanks! Yes it is a current issue. I feel like more of us need to share our experiences on how juniors are beneficial and part of a company culture and engineering ecosystem at large.
that is true!