Microsoft execs worry AI will eat entry level coding jobs

Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich and VP of Developer Community Scott Hanselman have written a paper arguing that senior software engineers must mentor junior developers to prevent AI coding agents from hollowing out the profession's future skills base.

The paper, Redefining the Engineering Profession for AI, is based on several assumptions, the first of which is that agentic coding assistants "give senior engineers an AI boost... while imposing an AI drag on early-in-career (EiC) developers to steer, verify and integrate AI output."

In an earlier podcast on the subject, Russinovich said this basic premise – that AI is increasing productivity only for senior developers while reducing it for juniors – is a "hot topic in all our customer engagements... they all say they see it at their companies."

The problem is that AI agents can claim success when in fact the code is bad, with issues such as:

• Significant bugs
• Implementing ...