Ask HN: Thoughts on hiring junior engineers in 2026?

Just started hiring for my AI x Freight startup. To vet junior hires I'm offering them paid internships (above median market pay) before making a FT hire decision.

So far, I'm really struggling to see the value add of a junior engineer given how good the models have become. A senior with Max plan beats three junior hires (very rough estimate).

Having spoken with a few peers (founders), they have expressed similar feelings. I want to hire juniors and see them grow, but I feel my bar of expectations is at an all time high, and perhaps unrealistic.

6 points | by abhishekbasu 1 hour ago

4 comments

  • jdubya859 1 hour ago
    It's a tough time to make those decisions. I really don't know what juniors will do. Continuity is a real cost, but a long term one. So, early on definitely doesn't make sense, especially when you are laying a foundation. But afterwards, you have to have some form of continuity to maintain the product and the cheapest and best way would be to bring on young talent.
  • nagalluri 1 hour ago
    Hi fellow founder here, just sharing some thoughts. Agree that with AI more eng work can now be handled by a senior dev but a good junior dev using AI is also more capable than ever. I think with a good process in place, you can ramp up a junior dev sooner rather than later. And as good as AI is, there's still a human bottleneck, so I'd assess the quantity of work you have vs. the technical complexity
    [-]
    • abhishekbasu 1 hour ago
      Thanks for sharing. Do you have a few examples of these human bottlenecks where a junior engineer is apt?
  • joeyguerra 51 minutes ago
    hire them. that's my thought.
  • rvz 42 minutes ago
    > So far, I'm really struggling to see the value add of a junior engineer given how good the models have become. A senior with Max plan beats three junior hires (very rough estimate).

    A single staff-level engineer with 4 concurrent agents on a Max plan replaces 4 seniors and 12 junior hires.

    It's okay to say that we want don't need to hire any human programmers anymore since they are the bottleneck. But the strong disadvantage is that these agents need humans to tell them what to do.

    If you think otherwise, look no further than the Huggingface hack and what happens when they run completely autonomously. Not only that is a waste of tokens, it can cause you to be legally liable for damages if something terrible happens.