Does your company welcome juniors and interns despite AI progress?
Do you remember when we talked about Duolingo replacing staff with AI about a week ago?
Cutting the labour cost is becoming more extensive, and there is an unusually high unemployment rate for recent college students: "Companies might be replacing entry-level white collar jobs with AI, or their spending on AI might simply be 'crowding out' the spending for new hires." 😳
How can a young student become a skilled senior if he's never given the chance to gain experience?
Is your company still open to juniors and interns? (Feel free to share your job opportunities.)
Replies
Nice thread, Nika. Hiring juniors and interns has always been difficult for companies, especially medium and large ones. They want someone who can get the job done without investing in training juniors, and with AI, this has gotten even worse.
The only chance for them is to develop open-source projects to demonstrate they can work independently.
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@eljo_prifti Probably, but in that case, really good ones will start their own business, and those average will be stuck because they will not succeed, but will still not be at the stage of being welcome in a company (because they weren't good enough). What about these people? Will they be forced to completely change their occupation?
@busmark_w_nika Unfortunately, few will be forced to completely change their occupation because they will be bored by having negative responses from recruiters.
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@eljo_prifti 🥲
It’s sad because everyone needs to start somewhere but this is the truth.Companies can take a profile in consideration only if they can make profit out of it.
@eljo_prifti Agree - as an early stage start-up - I initially naively thought that cs interns from top unis would be like hiring the next elon musk... boy was I in for a rude awakening. The time to train about basic things (like work ethic) was just too much cost for us to take on at an early stage where if you dont add value right away... it's just slowing everyone else down...
At least for technical people, I think this is still just a post-covid situation where big companies hired people just to have them (and not let their competitors do). It's indeed a bad combo knowking AI came directly after this, prolonging the situation.
But in my opinion, it will get way better for interns & juniors in the near future, while actual seniors (10-15yrs+ of exp) will have it way worse than before because, being helped by AI, juniors have their productivity skyrocket and many, MANY technologies are really easy to grasp and utilize, depending on industry.
Really skilled, experienced and talented seniors will still be most-wanted, but as in all industries, they are and always will be hard to find and keep.
Love the thread btw, it's great putting my mind to action to respond to this!
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@aeromaniax IMO, the best way for a senior programmer is to build something on the side... because imagine yourself in your late 50s being fired. Hard to find a job, and you still have some time left before your pension. Ageing is still a big thing on the market.
Hi, Nika
What a good question.
I cant imagine my company without 'fresh young blood'. But the problem is not AI, the problem is that young people with no experience want crazy amount of money. That is what hard to accept for me, but maybe Im too old
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@sam_raika What amount are they asking for? :D
While AI is growing fast, fresh ideas and energy from juniors and interns are still incredibly valuable. They bring creativity, new perspectives, and a hunger to learn that no AI can place.
Headliner
We personally hire interns! We just had a specialized master's student wrap his content marketing internship with us.
A lot of the tasks he was given could be assisted by AI but not replaced by AI. For instance, he helped build our email onboarding for new customers. That specific task cannot be offloaded to AI as it requires manual editing, adding links, creating images, etc.
I would be open to hiring another intern in the future and would actually encourage them to leverage AI to help create more and keep hours down. I am a huge fan of AI when it comes to content creation as it does just that—help create more in less time.
Having an intern is a great way to take those tasks off my plate, allowing us to maintain a steady content stream and letting me focus on some higher level tasks.
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@elissa_craig Happy to see that someone tries to help young people get some experience. Admire it to be honest. Today, I read how one company looked for AI agents instead of people and offered them around $6k per year.
We are still a small start-up, so we are not hiring yet, but we absolutely want to. We already have an intern working with us. I believe juniors need to come prepared to keep learning. The world is changing so fast that people, regardless of their age, cannot come with the mindset that they know what to do.
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@amy_ingram I will be glad to see your growth, and also give opportunities to young talents. For such an initiative, I admire people. :)
I think this has mostly impacted junior devs. Other job functions seem to be less impacted. We still have plenty of interns in data, marketing, sales/bus dev.
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@slowpokepeter, what about graphic designers and copywriters? I remember 5 years back, these positions were needed quite a lot. Now? I can barely see this job function on demand.
It’s becoming an inevitable trend, and new grads should learn to embrace and adapt to it. Companies are still hiring junior devs—just in smaller numbers. But if you can show strong skills in using AI tools to boost your overall productivity, that can actually become one of your biggest advantages in today’s job market.
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@justin_bao Have you seen today's stories on Techcrunch? There is a huge demonstration of how there is a culture "NOT HIRE PEOPLE". https://www.instagram.com/p/DJUVX7qv93F/
Reading all this makes me extra grateful for my own experience. I joined as an intern after a career break, and honestly, it was such a supportive environment. I didn’t feel judged for starting over, and that made all the difference.
Yes, AI is everywhere now, but it shouldn’t replace the learning curve. Juniors just need a chance to grow—and not everyone comes in as a rockstar. Some of us bloom with the right guidance. Hope more companies stay open to that.
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@ambika_vaish Did you start recently, or is it some past thing? I am pretty sure that I would be doomed RN if I tried to get a job.
@busmark_w_nika I started recently—after a very long break—and honestly, I got lucky with some great opportunities like contributing to the PageX launch. It’s been a huge confidence boost. Totally get what you’re saying though... if I were still applying, I’d be panicking too 😅
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@ambika_vaish But I reckon that you have previous experience. Juniors (fresh graduates from universities) aren't so lucky :D
@busmark_w_nika You're right, I have some previous experience, but it's been a bit of a challenge coming back into a new field after the break. For fresh grads, though, I can imagine it’s even harder right now with everything shifting. That’s why I’m so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. :)