I've always felt the real challenge isn't the LLM itself, but managing the context around it.
Many people assume that writing a good prompt is enough, but the real work is turning something unpredictable into a tool you can actually rely on.
Over the past few years, a lot of teams have shown that remote work can be productive and stable. But as the market cools and power shifts back to management, return-to-office policies are quietly making a comeback.
It feels less about actual performance and more about a need for control. Some of these companies even invested in remote tooling during the pandemic, and now they’re choosing to ignore it. You start to wonder if they’re really looking at output, or just want people back in seats so things look like they’re under control.
This project really resonates with me. I have a few friends in healthcare who had great ideas for patient tools, but without a technical partner and no budget for a development team, nothing ever came of them.
Seeing someone actually build something like this, even if it's not perfect, gives me a sense of hope. When you combine domain expertise with some AI tools, you don’t have to wait around for someone else. You can just start.
Several teams around me stopped hiring juniors over the past couple of years. It’s not that the newcomers aren’t good, it’s just that no one has time to train them. AI showed up at just the right moment to offer a convenient excuse, and companies are happy to save on the cost of mentoring.
But long term, this feels like borrowing from the future. Without someone to train, there’s no one ready to step up later.
This past year, I’ve seen a lot of entry-level jobs quietly disappear. It’s not that people are getting laid off, it’s that no one’s hiring beginners anymore. What’s really missing isn’t just the jobs, it’s the chance to grow. If there’s nowhere to start, how are new people supposed to get in and learn?
Were there ever that many low-level Junior jobs though?
In my experience, almost everyone in college would get an internship Junior / Senior year and convert into an FTE after graduation. Those that were not so talented or not so lucky usually struggled to find work, taking many months to finally land a job. Most typically at a Booz Allen Hamilton type of place that was just throwing bodies into seats.
At all of my employers, I’ve never really seen any openings for Juniors, only Mid and Senior positions. The few Juniors we did bring on outside of an internship pipeline were either internal transfers, e.g. a SOC analyst given a chance or a nepotism type of hire.
I got out of school 15 years ago so its been a while now, but at that time there were a ton of junior roles.
I got a CS bachelors from a decent state school, nothing fancy, and everyone I kept in touch with had found an entry level role pretty quickly after graduation.
I did do an internship and had an offer from them, but the psy was pretty low and I really didn't want to move where they were. It was a bit stressful turning that down early senior year without a backup yet, but I ended up with quite a few interviews and an offer before graduation.
Unfortunately i think many of those jobs can also be attributed to general economic health post low interest rates.
Companies now need to leave pre-revenue and turn a profit, or if you’re an established company you need to cut costs/increase margins from other economic headwinds (tariffs, inflation, gov policies etc)
A Junior dev (and most devs onboarding) will typically require 6-8 months to start being able to meaningfully contribute, then there’s a general oversight/mentorship for a few years after.
Yes they produce, however I think junior’s market salary plus the opportunity cost lost of the higher salaried mid and senior level in mentoring is a hard pill to swallow.
The team i work on is stretched very thin, and even after layoffs (which management agreed they went too far with) it’s pulling teeth to get another dev to build things companies are begging for and even willing to separately pay cash upfront for us to build
If you’re getting into the current job market as a junior, you’ll likely need to go heavy in the buzzword tech, accept a position from a smaller company that pays substantially less, then in 1-2 years job hop into a higher paying mid level role (not to say 1-2 years makes anyone mid level imo)
Sadly, they will just have to try harder. It is still doable especially for an American, and I'm not a fan of these doomsayers' prophesying. There is still hope because TikTok and video games are putting most young people in a trance.
It is a career path, but it 1) is a path that only works for a small amount of people, most people don't earn anything like that 2) requires a special kind of personality and set of skills 3) is subject to the whim of algorithms 4) requires brand building over time but can be destroyed overnight for many reasons. Most "regular" jobs are much more stable.
Not so long ago people who played with programming and computers were wasting their time and potential, disappointed their parents and would have been better off getting a "regular" job.
Um, no. Way more young people are making that kind of money by being a programmer or doctor or lawyer or nurse or actuary or something versus the minuscule number of people making any significant money on tiktok or video games.
I used to think the Wow signal was just an overhyped story from the past. But after looking into the technical details, I realized it was genuinely unusual. The signal was clean and narrow-band, nothing like ordinary noise. Decades later, people are still going through old data to study it. What really stays with me is not the search for aliens, but the quiet persistence behind it. Our curiosity about the universe doesn't fade so easily.
I once heard a live a cappella performance in a church, and the moment the voices began, it felt like the whole space wrapped around me in silence. That was when I really understood the beauty of choral music. It is not just about the melody but about how the sound blends in the room and resonates with the air. It is something you simply cannot feel through headphones.
When I was a kid, I thought growing up meant taking trains across states. But now even reliable daily commutes feel out of reach. So when I see something like Brightline, it’s quietly moving. Just the image of someone riding an old railcar across America makes the world feel a little more romantic.
I've been using an app recently that added a bunch of AI features, but the basic search is still slow and often doesn't work. Every time I open it, I kind of brace myself, but it still disappoints me.
It feels like more and more products are focused on looking impressive, when all I really want is for the everyday features to just work well.
I’ve tried using large models to come up with jokes. They can mimic the structure pretty well, but something always feels missing. It’s like following a recipe step by step but ending up with food that lacks real flavor. Sometimes they get close, but it rarely feels truly surprising. Maybe humor needs more than just structure. Maybe it needs a unique point of view.
