As the techies are braving the layoffs season, with major tech giants like Microsoft and TCS firing their employees across businesses, several artificial intelligence (AI) companies are hiring people, but are most interested in a senior developer instead of a kid who just graduated.
‘AI companies don’t want junior engineers,’
“AI companies don’t want junior engineers anymore,” wrote the US influencer, Amanda Goodall, on social media.
She further claimed that an AI firm is not hiring fresh or entry-level engineers but senior developers.
“Anthropic says it’s not hiring new grads or entry-level engineers,” before adding, “Instead of training up junior talent, Anthropic is hiring people who already know how to delegate to AI and review work at scale.”
AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level jobs
This comes after Anthropic CPO Mike Krieger on the NYT’s “Hard Fork” podcast that the AI firm is focusing on hiring experienced employees, and its CEO, Dario Amodei, in an interview with Axios, claimed that AI could eliminate 50 per cent of entry-level jobs.
Krieger, who co-founded Instagram, said that the company lack a “really good internship program” and has some “hesitancy hiring entry-level workers”.
During his appearance on the 20VC podcast, hosted by Harry Stebbings, he predicted a possible shift for the software engineers as coders have started outsourcing work to AI. Talking about the role of people, he said, that will just “come up with the right set of ideas, focus on the design, figure out how to delegate work correctly, and review things at scale”.
But, but, but. Exceptions are always there.
Anthropic said that if someone has hands-on experience with their AI tool, Claude, the company would be interested in onboarding them.
“If somebody is… extremely good at using Claude to do their work and map it out, of course, we would bring them on as well,” Business Insider quoted a company spokesperson as saying.
The AI firm on its career page has nearly 200 open roles – 190 to be precise – and the majority of them are for those who have at least five years of experience.
Goodall, who goes on X (formerly Twitter) by the handle “@jobchick”, added, “So unless you’re already operating like a senior dev, or using Claude (their chatbot) like a power tool…. you’re out of the running.”
She ended her social media post with a question: “How long before every tech company drops the ladder behind them too?”
AI companies don’t want junior engineers anymore.
— Amanda Goodall (@thejobchick) August 2, 2025
Anthropic … says it’s not hiring new grads or entry-level engineers.
“We still have some hesitancy with entry-level workers.” -Mike Kieger, Chief Product Officer
Instead of training up junior talent, Anthropic is hiring…
AI is the new entry-level worker: Social Media
Many on social media reacted to her post, with one saying, “The reality is that AI is the new entry-level worker….”
“Probably makes sense for a company like Anthropic, given their current market opportunity,” said another.
A third commented, “I sure hope someone in charge remembers this brain-dead move the next time these companies complain that there is no talent. I’m looking at you, too, comment section.”
“It’s not just Anthropic or AI companies – the company I work with does this (I’m a Senior dev), and to be honest, Gemini Code Assistant is a very capable junior developer. I’ve actually never had one at this company, and I’m much more productive,” shared a fourth.
