When we say we believe that it still makes sense to hire junior developers it’s easy to dismiss the thought because, well, of course we do. We’re engaged every day in training new junior talent and helping support the job searches of new junior talent.
But when two very visible leaders in the technology world take that position maybe it lands with a bit more impact. And just in the last few days, Kent Beck and Matt Garman have both staked out their support for hiring juniors even in the age of AI.
Just in case their names don’t ring a bell, let’s introduce Beck and Garman. Kent Beck is an influential author and software engineer who has spent decades refining the craft of programming through books like Extreme Programming Explained and Test-Driven Development: By Example. He currently shares his deep expertise in software design and empirical engineering through his popular newsletter, Tidy First?, which is where we found his thoughts regarding hiring juniors.
Matt Garman is the CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and from that position has significant insight into and impact upon the infrastructure that is used to deliver modern software applications. We’re quoting him from the most recent (as of the date of this post) episode of the WIRED The Uncanny Valley podcast.
Let’s hear first from Kent Beck’s recent Substack newsletter issue titled The Bet on Juniors Just Got Better:
I’ve been watching junior developers use AI coding assistants well. Not vibe coding—not accepting whatever the AI spits out. Augmented coding: using AI to accelerate learning while maintaining quality. [...]
The juniors working this way compress their ramp dramatically. Tasks that used to take days take hours. Not because the AI does the work, but because the AI collapses the search space. Instead of spending three hours figuring out which API to use, they spend twenty minutes evaluating options the AI surfaced. The time freed this way isn’t invested in another unprofitable feature, though, it’s invested in learning. [...]
If you’re an engineering manager thinking about hiring: The junior bet has gotten better. Not because juniors have changed, but because the genie, used well, accelerates learning.
Beck’s reference to “the genie” is his way of referencing a coding agent. I’ve only excerpted from the newsletter - please read the whole thing.
Now here are Matt Garman’s thoughts on hiring juniors. He’s coming from a different perspective than Kent Beck given their very different roles and backgrounds but they end up at the same place: it makes sense to be hiring junior talent. Garman’s remarks are taken from the transcript of a podcast, so I’m including the interviewer’s question for context:
Interviewer: “You actually made an interesting comment where you said that replacing junior employees with AI is, quote, one of the dumbest ideas you've ever heard, which made me laugh. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more about that and more about how you see artificial intelligence and agentic AI changing the workplace in the years to come. Because I think you have maybe a point of view on this that some people might find reassuring and that I think is different than what we hear from a lot of other leaders.
Garman: Yeah. And that point in particular, by the way, was just, it was specifically around software developers, but I think it applies to lots, which is there is a, there is, there was this kind of thought that like you'll just replace all of your junior engineers and all of your junior employees and you'll just have the most senior, most experienced employees and then agents. And number one, my experience is that many of the most junior folks are actually the most experienced with the AI tools. They're actually most able to get the most out of them, number one.
Number two, they're usually the least expensive because they're right out of college and they generally make less. So, kind of like they're, if you're thinking about cost optimization, like they're not the only people you'd want to kind of optimize around.
And really three is that at some point that whole thing explodes on each other, on itself. If you have no talent pipeline that you're building and no junior people that you're mentoring and bringing up through the company, we often find that that's where we get some of the best ideas. We get the new like fresh blood into the company from fresh hires out of college.
There's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of new thoughts, there's a lot of new ideas. And so my thinking was just like you've got to think longer term about how you think about the health of a company and just saying, okay, great, we're never going to hire junior people anymore. That's just a non-starter for really anyone who's trying to build a long term company.”
From Uncanny Valley | WIRED: BIG INTV: AWS CEO Matt Garman Doesn’t Think AI Should Replace Junior Devs, Dec 16, 2025. This material may be protected by copyright.
So there you have it. Coming from two very different directions, strong support for the idea that coding agents, LLMs, and other AI tooling are not justification for stopping the hiring of junior talent. Luckily there are others who also believe in the value of junior talent—including those employers who hired recent NSS graduates in October and November. Those two months combined were the strongest two month period for graduate placements in 2025. Let’s see what 2026 will bring the tech world!