【转载】如果你停止招聘初级工程师，你的高级工程师将掌控你
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原文地址:If You Stop Hiring Juniors, Your Senior Engineers Own You · eval ( code )
If You Stop Hiring Juniors, Your Senior Engineers Own You
如果你停止招聘初级工程师，你的高级工程师将掌控你
There’s a popular take right now that AI eliminates the need for junior engineers. The argument goes: if an AI agent can do the work of a junior developer, why would you hire one? Just give your senior engineers better tools and let them do the work of three people.
目前有一种流行的观点认为，AI 消除了对初级工程师的需求。其论点是：如果一个 AI 代理能完成初级开发人员的工作，为什么还要雇佣初级人员呢？只需为高级工程师配备更好的工具，让他们完成三个人的工作量。
I get why that looks good on a spreadsheet. I also think it’s dangerously short-sighted.
我理解这种观点在财务报表上看起来很美好。但我认为这是极其短视的。
And no, I’m not going to make the mentorship argument. I’m not going to make the “moral obligation to train the next generation” argument. Those things matter, but they’re not what keeps a CFO up at night.
不，我不会从指导培养的角度来论证。也不会从"培养下一代是道德义务"的角度来论证。这些固然重要，但并不是让首席财务官夜不能寐的原因。
Leverage is what keeps a CFO up at night. And if you stop hiring junior engineers, you just handed all of it to your senior workforce.
杠杆效应才是让首席财务官夜不能寐的原因。而如果你停止招聘初级工程师，就等于把所有的杠杆都拱手让给了高级工程师团队。
Junior employees are salary insurance
初级员工是薪资保险
Senior engineers know things. They have context, relationships, institutional knowledge. That makes them valuable. It also makes them expensive, and it gives them leverage.
高级工程师掌握着知识。他们拥有业务背景、人际关系和机构知识。这使他们极具价值。同时也使他们成本高昂，并掌握了谈判筹码。
Eventually this turns into a comp conversation. A senior engineer says “I want a 40% raise or I’m leaving,” and the company’s ability to respond depends entirely on what their alternatives look like. If there’s a bench of mid-level engineers who’ve been growing into that space for the past two years, the company has options. They can negotiate from a position of strength. The loss would hurt, but it wouldn’t be catastrophic.
最终，这会演变成一场关于薪酬的对话。一位高级工程师说：“我要加薪 40%，否则我就走人。”而公司能否应对，完全取决于他们有什么替代方案。如果公司里有一批在过去两年中逐步成长起来的中级工程师，那么公司就有谈判的筹码。他们可以从强势地位出发进行协商。失去这位高级工程师固然令人痛心，但还不至于造成灾难性后果。
If there’s no bench, because you stopped hiring juniors three years ago and there’s nobody coming up behind your seniors, you don’t have options. You pay the 40%, or you lose the person and spend six months (and a recruiter’s fee) trying to find a replacement at market rate, which is probably even higher.
但如果公司没有后备力量，因为你三年前就停止招聘初级工程师，现在没有任何人能接替高级工程师的位置，那么你就没有选择余地。要么支付 40%的加薪，要么失去这位员工，并花费六个月时间（外加招聘中介费）以市场价寻找替代者——而市场价可能更高。
Junior employees aren’t just doing junior work. They’re a long-term bet. They’re future mid-levels and future seniors growing inside your organization, building context that you can’t hire in from the outside. Every junior you don’t hire today is a senior you’ll have to overpay for in three years.
初级员工做的不仅仅是初级工作。他们是一项长期投资。他们是未来会成长为公司内部中级和高级工程师的人才，他们正在积累那些无法从外部招聘获得的内部经验。你今天不招聘的每一位初级员工，都意味着三年后你需要为一位高级工程师支付过高的薪水。
The pipeline problem is already here
人才断层问题已经显现
This isn’t theoretical. We’re watching it play out right now with the boomer generation retiring.
这并非理论假设。我们正亲眼目睹婴儿潮一代退休所引发的问题。
Small and mid-sized businesses across the country are closing, not because the business failed, but because the owner is retiring and there’s nobody to hand the keys to. They spent decades not investing in their talent pipeline, and when it’s time to step away, the business just ends. Everything the owner built, gone. Not because of competition or market shifts. Because nobody was coming up behind them.
全国范围内，许多中小型企业正在倒闭，并不是因为经营失败，而是因为企业主即将退休，却无人接手。他们几十年来从未投资人才培养，等到要退下来的时候，企业也就走到了尽头。企业主毕生心血，就此付诸东流。不是因为竞争或市场变化，而是因为无人接班。
This is why the apprenticeship model existed for centuries. It was never about getting cheap labor from a teenager sweeping the shop floor. It was about the lifeblood of the business. The master trained the apprentice because without that pipeline, the trade dies when the master does. Every generation of skilled workers has to produce the next one. That’s not some feel-good mentorship thing. It’s survival.
正因如此，学徒制才延续了数百年。这从来不是为了从打扫车间的少年那里获取廉价劳动力，而是关乎企业的命脉。师傅培养学徒，是因为若没有这条人才输送管道，一旦师傅离世，这门手艺就会失传。每一代技术工人都必须培养出下一代。这并非什么温情脉脉的师徒情谊，而是生存必需。
“But we won’t need the next generation because AI will do the work.” Fine. If AI replaces ALL engineering work, seniors included, then sure, the pipeline doesn’t matter. But nobody is actually arguing that. The argument is that AI replaces juniors specifically.
“但我们不需要下一代了，因为人工智能会完成所有工作。”好吧，如果人工智能能取代所有工程工作，包括资深工程师，那确实人才管道无关紧要。但没人真的在主张这一点。他们的论点是：人工智能专门取代初级工程师。
Which means you still need seniors.
这意味着，你仍然需要资深工程师。
So where do they come from? They don’t show up fully formed. They start as juniors and grow into the role over years. Cut the pipeline and you cut the supply of the very people you’re saying you still need. Ask anyone trying to hire a COBOL engineer right now. The pipeline dried up decades ago, and the few who are left name their price.
那么，这些高级工程师是从哪里来的？他们并非一蹴而就。他们从初级工程师做起，经过多年成长才胜任高级职位。切断人才输送管道，就等于切断了你声称仍然需要的那些人才的供给。去问问现在想招聘 COBOL 工程师的人吧。这条人才管道几十年前就干涸了，如今剩下的人寥寥无几，个个都能开价。
A CEO who neglects that pipeline to juice quarterly growth is not doing right by their shareholders. Short-term headcount savings look great on this quarter’s earnings call. They look a lot less great when your senior engineers start retiring and you have nobody to replace them.
为了短期增长而忽视人才输送管道的 CEO，并没有为股东负责。在本季度的财报电话会议上，短期人力成本的节省看起来非常漂亮。但当你的高级工程师开始退休，而你却无人可替时，这种“漂亮”就显得黯然失色了。
The “AI replaces juniors” crowd is proposing the exact same mistake on an accelerated timeline. Stop hiring juniors in 2026, and by 2030 you have a workforce of expensive seniors with no succession plan. Some of those seniors will leave for better offers. Some will burn out. Some will just decide they’re done.
“AI 将取代初级工程师”这一派别，正提议以更快的速度重蹈覆辙。如果在 2026 年停止招聘初级工程师，那么到 2030 年，你的团队将只剩下昂贵的高级工程师，且没有继任计划。其中一些高级工程师会跳槽到更好的机会，一些会因倦怠而离开，还有一些会直接决定退出。
Your senior engineers might not need the job
你的高级工程师可能并不需要这份工作
Here’s where this gets really interesting for engineering specifically.
这正是工程领域最引人深思的地方。
Software engineering is one of the few professions where FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is not theoretical. A senior engineer who bought before housing went through-the-roof, spent a decade earning public-company equity, and kept living like the startup days is in a very different bargaining position from someone still trying to build savings. They don’t need the job in the same way. They work because they want to, not because they have to.
软件工程是少数几个实现财务独立、提前退休（FIRE）并非空谈的职业之一。一位在房价飙升前就购置了房产、在上市公司工作十年积累了股权，并始终保持创业时期生活开销习惯的资深工程师，其议价能力与仍在努力积累储蓄的人截然不同。他们不再需要这份工作，而是出于意愿而工作，而非迫于生计。
That changes the power dynamic completely.
这彻底改变了权力格局。
When a senior engineer who needs their paycheck asks for a raise, there’s a negotiation. Both sides have something to lose. But when a senior engineer who’s already financially independent asks for a raise, there’s no negotiation. They’re not bluffing when they say “I’ll walk.” They will literally retire to a beach and write open source projects for fun. You have nothing to hold over them.
当一位依赖薪水的资深工程师要求加薪时，双方会进行谈判，彼此都有所顾忌。但当一位已经实现财务独立的资深工程师要求加薪时，根本不存在谈判。他们说“我不干了”时绝非虚张声势，而是真的会退休到某个海滩，只为兴趣而编写开源项目。你手中没有任何可以制约他们的筹码。
Now imagine your entire senior engineering team is made up of people like this, and you have no junior pipeline coming up behind them. You’re not managing a workforce. You’re managing a group of volunteers. Highly paid volunteers who know exactly how much it would cost to replace them. Good luck with that annual review cycle.
现在想象一下，你的整个高级工程师团队都由这样的人组成，而他们身后没有任何初级工程师梯队作为后备力量。你管理的不再是一支有组织的团队，而是一群志愿者——高薪的志愿者，他们清楚地知道自己被替代的成本有多高。祝你在年度评审中好运吧。
The only counterbalance is having a healthy pipeline of less experienced engineers who are growing into those roles. People who are building careers, who have financial motivation to stay and grow, who give you organizational resilience when a senior decides they’d rather go sailing.
唯一的制衡力量，是拥有一个健康的、由经验较少的工程师组成的成长梯队，他们正在逐步成长为高级角色。这些人在建立自己的职业生涯，有经济动力留下来并不断成长。当某位高级工程师决定去航海时，他们能为组织提供必要的韧性。
AI will keep getting better. So what?
AI 会不断进步。那又怎样？
I wrote an entire post about why the timeline on that is longer than people think.
我专门写了一篇文章，说明为什么 AI 的发展时间表比人们想象的要长。
But even if AI does eventually handle most of what junior engineers do today, that doesn’t eliminate the economic argument. It just changes what “junior” means. Junior engineers of the future might spend less time writing boilerplate and more time reviewing AI output, learning system design, and building the judgment that makes senior engineers valuable. The role evolves. The need for a pipeline doesn’t.
但即使 AI 最终能完成如今初级工程师所做的大部分工作，这也无法消除对人才梯队的经济需求。它只是改变了“初级”的定义。未来的初级工程师可能不再花大量时间编写样板代码，而是更多地审查 AI 的输出、学习系统设计，并培养那种让高级工程师变得有价值的判断力。角色会演变，但对人才梯队的需求不会消失。
The hard part is that the old apprenticeship path probably does break. You can’t just hand a junior the boilerplate work that AI now handles and pretend nothing changed. Companies have to design a new path: reviewing AI output, tracing why a generated change is wrong, learning the codebase well enough to know when the agent is making a plausible mess, and sitting close enough to senior engineers to absorb judgment instead of just syntax.
问题的关键在于，传统的学徒培养路径可能确实已经行不通了。我们不能把那些 AI 已经能处理的模板化工作丢给初级工程师，然后假装一切照旧。企业必须设计一条新的培养路径：审查 AI 的输出结果，追溯生成变更出错的原因，深入学习代码库，以便判断 AI 代理何时在制造看似合理的混乱，同时还要让初级工程师与高级工程师坐得足够近，以便学习他们的判断力，而不仅仅是语法规则。
That’s not cheaper in the first quarter. It takes real management attention. But the alternative is pretending senior engineers appear fully formed because the bottom of the ladder got automated. They don’t.
第一季度这样做并不会降低成本，这需要管理层真正重视。但另一种选择是自欺欺人地认为高级工程师会凭空出现，因为基层岗位已经被自动化取代了。他们不会凭空出现。
Companies that stop investing in their pipeline because “AI will handle it” are making a bet that AI will be good enough, cheap enough, and reliable enough to replace the entire bottom of their talent funnel, permanently, starting now. That’s a bold bet. And if they’re wrong, they’ve lost years of talent development that they can’t get back.
那些因为“AI 能搞定”而停止投资人才梯队的公司，实际上是在赌：AI 从现在开始就能足够好、足够便宜、足够可靠，可以永久性地取代人才漏斗最底层的全部岗位。这可是一场豪赌。一旦赌输了，他们损失的可是多年的人才培养成果，而且再也无法挽回。
What this actually looks like in practice
实际中这到底意味着什么
I’m not saying every company needs to hire the same number of juniors they did five years ago. AI is changing the ratio. A senior engineer with good AI tools probably does absorb some of the tasks that used to go to juniors. That’s real.
我并不是说每家公司都必须像五年前那样招聘同样数量的初级工程师。AI 确实正在改变人员配比。一位拥有优质 AI 工具的高级工程师，确实可以承担一些原本由初级工程师完成的任务。这是事实。
But “changing the ratio” is very different from “eliminating the role.” Shopify gets this. We significantly expanded early-career hiring for 2026. This is a company betting hard on AI across the board, and we’re still investing in the pipeline because those aren’t opposing strategies.
但“调整比例”和“取消岗位”完全是两码事。Shopify 就深谙此道。2026 年，我们大幅增加了对初级岗位的招聘。这是一家全力押注 AI 的公司，但我们仍在持续投资人才培养，因为这两者并不矛盾。
Within five years, the companies that stopped hiring juniors will be the ones posting breathless LinkedIn articles about their “talent pipeline crisis” and wondering how it happened. The rest of us will know exactly how it happened. We watched them do it to themselves in real time.
网友解答：五年后，那些停止招聘初级工程师的公司，将会发布一篇篇令人窒息的 LinkedIn 文章，大谈特谈他们的“人才管道危机”，并纳闷这究竟是怎么发生的。而我们其他人，将会清楚地知道这一切是如何发生的。我们亲眼看着他们一步步走向自我毁灭。
--【壹】--：
有道理，前提是实现能源自由。人造太阳或者光伏成本能做到5年回本。
--【贰】--：
其实并不会发生。3d行业，比如影视和游戏，早就出现底层工作外包的情况了。很多欧美学建模，动画的一毕业根本找不到工作，因为工作都外包给印度和南美的工作室了。只招senior职位，junior压根不招。
--【叁】--：
现实就是，资本家希望的是，你不干有的是人干，那样工资就很低了
如果变成了，你不干没人能干了，工资肯定降不下来
所以资本家怎么选？
--【肆】--：
这个角度确实有意思，只是有点理想化了吧。
比如高级人才未必那么不可替代（说人话就是你不干有的是人干），况且留存率也未必有那么高…
--【伍】--：
这个情况感觉再国内不是特别适用，能替代的你的人太多了
--【陆】--：
看下来感觉讲的挺有道理的…但是人还是太多了你不干有的是人干，国情在此
--【柒】--：
架构，决策，方案都是高级开发定的，老板被高级开发套牢想起我这个小外包了
--【捌】--：
ai 目前还只是在冲击像编程，客服，作者，自媒体之类的互联网行业，等什么时候 ai + 机器人彻底大成，那就是该实体行业受到冲击，然后世界就可以彻底进入共产社会，等着国家发物资了，因为除了高精尖的研发管理，其余中低端的生产力完全不需要人来干了
--【玖】--：
but man, this is China
--【拾】--：
现实中确实如此，可是我们现在找工作的环境更像你干就干，不干有的是。总觉得ai的趋势会让人心中有些不安，长远趋势，ai让很多人丢失了很多工作的机会吧
--【拾壹】--：
四个字就可以总结，《人才断档》。AI只要还不能取代所有工作（如果真能那也是好事，那个时候大家应该在琢磨如何切换到共产主义），或者是有某种方便的技术让经验的转移变得方便快捷低成本，那人才梯队就是必要的。
但是可能人才培养更多地从小公司开始了，其实现在就有这种趋势了。一堆大公司校招需求写的仿佛在招聘专家，幸好面试的人还没那么疯，看起来他们还是清楚大家都什么水平的。
[!info]
进行了简单Markdown排版
原文地址:If You Stop Hiring Juniors, Your Senior Engineers Own You · eval ( code )
If You Stop Hiring Juniors, Your Senior Engineers Own You
如果你停止招聘初级工程师，你的高级工程师将掌控你
There’s a popular take right now that AI eliminates the need for junior engineers. The argument goes: if an AI agent can do the work of a junior developer, why would you hire one? Just give your senior engineers better tools and let them do the work of three people.
目前有一种流行的观点认为，AI 消除了对初级工程师的需求。其论点是：如果一个 AI 代理能完成初级开发人员的工作，为什么还要雇佣初级人员呢？只需为高级工程师配备更好的工具，让他们完成三个人的工作量。
I get why that looks good on a spreadsheet. I also think it’s dangerously short-sighted.
我理解这种观点在财务报表上看起来很美好。但我认为这是极其短视的。
And no, I’m not going to make the mentorship argument. I’m not going to make the “moral obligation to train the next generation” argument. Those things matter, but they’re not what keeps a CFO up at night.
不，我不会从指导培养的角度来论证。也不会从"培养下一代是道德义务"的角度来论证。这些固然重要，但并不是让首席财务官夜不能寐的原因。
Leverage is what keeps a CFO up at night. And if you stop hiring junior engineers, you just handed all of it to your senior workforce.
杠杆效应才是让首席财务官夜不能寐的原因。而如果你停止招聘初级工程师，就等于把所有的杠杆都拱手让给了高级工程师团队。
Junior employees are salary insurance
初级员工是薪资保险
Senior engineers know things. They have context, relationships, institutional knowledge. That makes them valuable. It also makes them expensive, and it gives them leverage.
高级工程师掌握着知识。他们拥有业务背景、人际关系和机构知识。这使他们极具价值。同时也使他们成本高昂，并掌握了谈判筹码。
Eventually this turns into a comp conversation. A senior engineer says “I want a 40% raise or I’m leaving,” and the company’s ability to respond depends entirely on what their alternatives look like. If there’s a bench of mid-level engineers who’ve been growing into that space for the past two years, the company has options. They can negotiate from a position of strength. The loss would hurt, but it wouldn’t be catastrophic.
最终，这会演变成一场关于薪酬的对话。一位高级工程师说：“我要加薪 40%，否则我就走人。”而公司能否应对，完全取决于他们有什么替代方案。如果公司里有一批在过去两年中逐步成长起来的中级工程师，那么公司就有谈判的筹码。他们可以从强势地位出发进行协商。失去这位高级工程师固然令人痛心，但还不至于造成灾难性后果。
If there’s no bench, because you stopped hiring juniors three years ago and there’s nobody coming up behind your seniors, you don’t have options. You pay the 40%, or you lose the person and spend six months (and a recruiter’s fee) trying to find a replacement at market rate, which is probably even higher.
但如果公司没有后备力量，因为你三年前就停止招聘初级工程师，现在没有任何人能接替高级工程师的位置，那么你就没有选择余地。要么支付 40%的加薪，要么失去这位员工，并花费六个月时间（外加招聘中介费）以市场价寻找替代者——而市场价可能更高。
Junior employees aren’t just doing junior work. They’re a long-term bet. They’re future mid-levels and future seniors growing inside your organization, building context that you can’t hire in from the outside. Every junior you don’t hire today is a senior you’ll have to overpay for in three years.
初级员工做的不仅仅是初级工作。他们是一项长期投资。他们是未来会成长为公司内部中级和高级工程师的人才，他们正在积累那些无法从外部招聘获得的内部经验。你今天不招聘的每一位初级员工，都意味着三年后你需要为一位高级工程师支付过高的薪水。
The pipeline problem is already here
人才断层问题已经显现
This isn’t theoretical. We’re watching it play out right now with the boomer generation retiring.
这并非理论假设。我们正亲眼目睹婴儿潮一代退休所引发的问题。
Small and mid-sized businesses across the country are closing, not because the business failed, but because the owner is retiring and there’s nobody to hand the keys to. They spent decades not investing in their talent pipeline, and when it’s time to step away, the business just ends. Everything the owner built, gone. Not because of competition or market shifts. Because nobody was coming up behind them.
全国范围内，许多中小型企业正在倒闭，并不是因为经营失败，而是因为企业主即将退休，却无人接手。他们几十年来从未投资人才培养，等到要退下来的时候，企业也就走到了尽头。企业主毕生心血，就此付诸东流。不是因为竞争或市场变化，而是因为无人接班。
This is why the apprenticeship model existed for centuries. It was never about getting cheap labor from a teenager sweeping the shop floor. It was about the lifeblood of the business. The master trained the apprentice because without that pipeline, the trade dies when the master does. Every generation of skilled workers has to produce the next one. That’s not some feel-good mentorship thing. It’s survival.
正因如此，学徒制才延续了数百年。这从来不是为了从打扫车间的少年那里获取廉价劳动力，而是关乎企业的命脉。师傅培养学徒，是因为若没有这条人才输送管道，一旦师傅离世，这门手艺就会失传。每一代技术工人都必须培养出下一代。这并非什么温情脉脉的师徒情谊，而是生存必需。
“But we won’t need the next generation because AI will do the work.” Fine. If AI replaces ALL engineering work, seniors included, then sure, the pipeline doesn’t matter. But nobody is actually arguing that. The argument is that AI replaces juniors specifically.
“但我们不需要下一代了，因为人工智能会完成所有工作。”好吧，如果人工智能能取代所有工程工作，包括资深工程师，那确实人才管道无关紧要。但没人真的在主张这一点。他们的论点是：人工智能专门取代初级工程师。
Which means you still need seniors.
这意味着，你仍然需要资深工程师。
So where do they come from? They don’t show up fully formed. They start as juniors and grow into the role over years. Cut the pipeline and you cut the supply of the very people you’re saying you still need. Ask anyone trying to hire a COBOL engineer right now. The pipeline dried up decades ago, and the few who are left name their price.
那么，这些高级工程师是从哪里来的？他们并非一蹴而就。他们从初级工程师做起，经过多年成长才胜任高级职位。切断人才输送管道，就等于切断了你声称仍然需要的那些人才的供给。去问问现在想招聘 COBOL 工程师的人吧。这条人才管道几十年前就干涸了，如今剩下的人寥寥无几，个个都能开价。
A CEO who neglects that pipeline to juice quarterly growth is not doing right by their shareholders. Short-term headcount savings look great on this quarter’s earnings call. They look a lot less great when your senior engineers start retiring and you have nobody to replace them.
为了短期增长而忽视人才输送管道的 CEO，并没有为股东负责。在本季度的财报电话会议上，短期人力成本的节省看起来非常漂亮。但当你的高级工程师开始退休，而你却无人可替时，这种“漂亮”就显得黯然失色了。
The “AI replaces juniors” crowd is proposing the exact same mistake on an accelerated timeline. Stop hiring juniors in 2026, and by 2030 you have a workforce of expensive seniors with no succession plan. Some of those seniors will leave for better offers. Some will burn out. Some will just decide they’re done.
“AI 将取代初级工程师”这一派别，正提议以更快的速度重蹈覆辙。如果在 2026 年停止招聘初级工程师，那么到 2030 年，你的团队将只剩下昂贵的高级工程师，且没有继任计划。其中一些高级工程师会跳槽到更好的机会，一些会因倦怠而离开，还有一些会直接决定退出。
Your senior engineers might not need the job
你的高级工程师可能并不需要这份工作
Here’s where this gets really interesting for engineering specifically.
这正是工程领域最引人深思的地方。
Software engineering is one of the few professions where FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is not theoretical. A senior engineer who bought before housing went through-the-roof, spent a decade earning public-company equity, and kept living like the startup days is in a very different bargaining position from someone still trying to build savings. They don’t need the job in the same way. They work because they want to, not because they have to.
软件工程是少数几个实现财务独立、提前退休（FIRE）并非空谈的职业之一。一位在房价飙升前就购置了房产、在上市公司工作十年积累了股权，并始终保持创业时期生活开销习惯的资深工程师，其议价能力与仍在努力积累储蓄的人截然不同。他们不再需要这份工作，而是出于意愿而工作，而非迫于生计。
That changes the power dynamic completely.
这彻底改变了权力格局。
When a senior engineer who needs their paycheck asks for a raise, there’s a negotiation. Both sides have something to lose. But when a senior engineer who’s already financially independent asks for a raise, there’s no negotiation. They’re not bluffing when they say “I’ll walk.” They will literally retire to a beach and write open source projects for fun. You have nothing to hold over them.
当一位依赖薪水的资深工程师要求加薪时，双方会进行谈判，彼此都有所顾忌。但当一位已经实现财务独立的资深工程师要求加薪时，根本不存在谈判。他们说“我不干了”时绝非虚张声势，而是真的会退休到某个海滩，只为兴趣而编写开源项目。你手中没有任何可以制约他们的筹码。
Now imagine your entire senior engineering team is made up of people like this, and you have no junior pipeline coming up behind them. You’re not managing a workforce. You’re managing a group of volunteers. Highly paid volunteers who know exactly how much it would cost to replace them. Good luck with that annual review cycle.
现在想象一下，你的整个高级工程师团队都由这样的人组成，而他们身后没有任何初级工程师梯队作为后备力量。你管理的不再是一支有组织的团队，而是一群志愿者——高薪的志愿者，他们清楚地知道自己被替代的成本有多高。祝你在年度评审中好运吧。
The only counterbalance is having a healthy pipeline of less experienced engineers who are growing into those roles. People who are building careers, who have financial motivation to stay and grow, who give you organizational resilience when a senior decides they’d rather go sailing.
唯一的制衡力量，是拥有一个健康的、由经验较少的工程师组成的成长梯队，他们正在逐步成长为高级角色。这些人在建立自己的职业生涯，有经济动力留下来并不断成长。当某位高级工程师决定去航海时，他们能为组织提供必要的韧性。
AI will keep getting better. So what?
AI 会不断进步。那又怎样？
I wrote an entire post about why the timeline on that is longer than people think.
我专门写了一篇文章，说明为什么 AI 的发展时间表比人们想象的要长。
But even if AI does eventually handle most of what junior engineers do today, that doesn’t eliminate the economic argument. It just changes what “junior” means. Junior engineers of the future might spend less time writing boilerplate and more time reviewing AI output, learning system design, and building the judgment that makes senior engineers valuable. The role evolves. The need for a pipeline doesn’t.
但即使 AI 最终能完成如今初级工程师所做的大部分工作，这也无法消除对人才梯队的经济需求。它只是改变了“初级”的定义。未来的初级工程师可能不再花大量时间编写样板代码，而是更多地审查 AI 的输出、学习系统设计，并培养那种让高级工程师变得有价值的判断力。角色会演变，但对人才梯队的需求不会消失。
The hard part is that the old apprenticeship path probably does break. You can’t just hand a junior the boilerplate work that AI now handles and pretend nothing changed. Companies have to design a new path: reviewing AI output, tracing why a generated change is wrong, learning the codebase well enough to know when the agent is making a plausible mess, and sitting close enough to senior engineers to absorb judgment instead of just syntax.
问题的关键在于，传统的学徒培养路径可能确实已经行不通了。我们不能把那些 AI 已经能处理的模板化工作丢给初级工程师，然后假装一切照旧。企业必须设计一条新的培养路径：审查 AI 的输出结果，追溯生成变更出错的原因，深入学习代码库，以便判断 AI 代理何时在制造看似合理的混乱，同时还要让初级工程师与高级工程师坐得足够近，以便学习他们的判断力，而不仅仅是语法规则。
That’s not cheaper in the first quarter. It takes real management attention. But the alternative is pretending senior engineers appear fully formed because the bottom of the ladder got automated. They don’t.
第一季度这样做并不会降低成本，这需要管理层真正重视。但另一种选择是自欺欺人地认为高级工程师会凭空出现，因为基层岗位已经被自动化取代了。他们不会凭空出现。
Companies that stop investing in their pipeline because “AI will handle it” are making a bet that AI will be good enough, cheap enough, and reliable enough to replace the entire bottom of their talent funnel, permanently, starting now. That’s a bold bet. And if they’re wrong, they’ve lost years of talent development that they can’t get back.
那些因为“AI 能搞定”而停止投资人才梯队的公司，实际上是在赌：AI 从现在开始就能足够好、足够便宜、足够可靠，可以永久性地取代人才漏斗最底层的全部岗位。这可是一场豪赌。一旦赌输了，他们损失的可是多年的人才培养成果，而且再也无法挽回。
What this actually looks like in practice
实际中这到底意味着什么
I’m not saying every company needs to hire the same number of juniors they did five years ago. AI is changing the ratio. A senior engineer with good AI tools probably does absorb some of the tasks that used to go to juniors. That’s real.
我并不是说每家公司都必须像五年前那样招聘同样数量的初级工程师。AI 确实正在改变人员配比。一位拥有优质 AI 工具的高级工程师，确实可以承担一些原本由初级工程师完成的任务。这是事实。
But “changing the ratio” is very different from “eliminating the role.” Shopify gets this. We significantly expanded early-career hiring for 2026. This is a company betting hard on AI across the board, and we’re still investing in the pipeline because those aren’t opposing strategies.
但“调整比例”和“取消岗位”完全是两码事。Shopify 就深谙此道。2026 年，我们大幅增加了对初级岗位的招聘。这是一家全力押注 AI 的公司，但我们仍在持续投资人才培养，因为这两者并不矛盾。
Within five years, the companies that stopped hiring juniors will be the ones posting breathless LinkedIn articles about their “talent pipeline crisis” and wondering how it happened. The rest of us will know exactly how it happened. We watched them do it to themselves in real time.
网友解答：五年后，那些停止招聘初级工程师的公司，将会发布一篇篇令人窒息的 LinkedIn 文章，大谈特谈他们的“人才管道危机”，并纳闷这究竟是怎么发生的。而我们其他人，将会清楚地知道这一切是如何发生的。我们亲眼看着他们一步步走向自我毁灭。
--【壹】--：
有道理，前提是实现能源自由。人造太阳或者光伏成本能做到5年回本。
--【贰】--：
其实并不会发生。3d行业，比如影视和游戏，早就出现底层工作外包的情况了。很多欧美学建模，动画的一毕业根本找不到工作，因为工作都外包给印度和南美的工作室了。只招senior职位，junior压根不招。
--【叁】--：
现实就是，资本家希望的是，你不干有的是人干，那样工资就很低了
如果变成了，你不干没人能干了，工资肯定降不下来
所以资本家怎么选？
--【肆】--：
这个角度确实有意思，只是有点理想化了吧。
比如高级人才未必那么不可替代（说人话就是你不干有的是人干），况且留存率也未必有那么高…
--【伍】--：
这个情况感觉再国内不是特别适用，能替代的你的人太多了
--【陆】--：
看下来感觉讲的挺有道理的…但是人还是太多了你不干有的是人干，国情在此
--【柒】--：
架构，决策，方案都是高级开发定的，老板被高级开发套牢想起我这个小外包了
--【捌】--：
ai 目前还只是在冲击像编程，客服，作者，自媒体之类的互联网行业，等什么时候 ai + 机器人彻底大成，那就是该实体行业受到冲击，然后世界就可以彻底进入共产社会，等着国家发物资了，因为除了高精尖的研发管理，其余中低端的生产力完全不需要人来干了
--【玖】--：
but man, this is China
--【拾】--：
现实中确实如此，可是我们现在找工作的环境更像你干就干，不干有的是。总觉得ai的趋势会让人心中有些不安，长远趋势，ai让很多人丢失了很多工作的机会吧
--【拾壹】--：
四个字就可以总结，《人才断档》。AI只要还不能取代所有工作（如果真能那也是好事，那个时候大家应该在琢磨如何切换到共产主义），或者是有某种方便的技术让经验的转移变得方便快捷低成本，那人才梯队就是必要的。
但是可能人才培养更多地从小公司开始了，其实现在就有这种趋势了。一堆大公司校招需求写的仿佛在招聘专家，幸好面试的人还没那么疯，看起来他们还是清楚大家都什么水平的。