Bro... where did all the junior dev jobs go? 🤨

A developer observes a severe shortage of genuine junior developer positions, with entry-level roles demanding years of experience and multiple skills. The developer questions the trend of replacing junior developers with AI, arguing that AI cannot replace the experience needed for building maintainable enterprise software, and warns that the lack of junior hires threatens the future pipeline of senior engineers.

Is it just me, or are there barely any real junior openings anymore? Every "entry-level" job somehow wants 3+ years of experience, a dozen frameworks, cloud, DevOps... like, isn't that the whole point of being junior? Freelance projects aren't much better either. The market feels overcrowded, and it's getting harder to land even small gigs. And one thing I genuinely don't get... Everyone's talking about replacing junior developers with AI. Sure, AI is an amazing tool, but are companies really comfortable depending on AI for enterprise applications? It can generate code, but building software that has to be maintained for years, work across teams, and support real businesses is a completely different game. If nobody hires junior developers today... where are tomorrow's senior engineers supposed to come from? Curious what everyone else is seeing. Is this the new normal, or am I just looking in the wrong places? 👀