- Companies risk future skills shortages if they stop hiring junior developers today, Microsoft executives say
- AI promises productivity increases, but we need humans to manage agents
- Human-AI collaboration is more important than code volume
Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich and VP of Developer Community Scott Hanselman have argued that senior engineers must actively mentor young workers to avoid future skills shortages, suggesting that AI coding agents are disproportionately affecting younger and newer workers.
In a research paper, the two executives describe how AI coding assistants can increase the productivity of senior engineers.
However, for workers just starting out in their careers, AI actually slows them down, forcing them to carefully guide, verify, and integrate AI-generated code with their own work.
AI helps code now, but could erase future skills
In the article, the two authors present some common problems with AI coding assistants, including introducing bugs, duplicating code, or writing code that passes certain tests but fails overall.
While these are entirely legitimate issues reflected in multiple studies and in practice, what most concerns Microsoft executives are the effects on human workers (and particularly younger generations).
At the moment, companies are hiring fewer developers in response to the increase in the use of AI. But this means that future generations will not be as well equipped with AI coding and management skills.
“If organizations focus only on short-term efficiency (hiring those who can already lead AI) they risk hollowing out the next generation of technical leaders,” he concludes.
Although smaller companies with limited resources might struggle to avoid falling into the traps of AI’s short-term promises, the two researchers and Microsoft executives urge larger organizations to continue hiring entry-level developers.
“The future of software engineering will not be defined by the volume of code that AI can generate, but by how effectively humans learn, reason, and mature alongside these systems,” they add, noting that while AI isn’t going anywhere, neither are human workers.
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