Our readingWhat is a korrent?
Drawn from what David Heinemeier Hansson said
AI and jobs Whether AI displaces human work, which jobs go first, and what replaces them.
On the topicWill AI take the jobs?under our view: New work appears, and somebody still has to check the machine
However good AI gets, we're always going to need people who know the ins and outs of what the machine comes up with.
Added to korrents 29 Aug 2026 · How quotes work · Something wrong? Tell us
Do you hold this korrent?Do you also believe this?
I hold this tooCannot both be true
Entry-level white-collar work is where junior programmers are hired. If half of it goes within five years, the industry is not simultaneously still hiring the juniors who become the seniors.
In tension with
The first says the industry needs people who can check the machine’s output. The second is the same person reporting that he has stopped checking it himself and handed the checking to other agents. One is about what the industry needs and the other about what one maintainer does, so both can hold; the gap between them is exactly the question of who is left to do the vetting.
In tension with
In most domains agents are now better than humans at finding bugs.
Hansson’s argument for keeping junior programmers is that someone must be able to vet what the machine produces. Sixteen months later he holds that the machine is better at that vetting than the humans are. The conclusion can survive — juniors become seniors, and that pipeline has other justifications — but the reason he gave for it does not.
In tension with
Hansson says the industry will still need junior programmers because somebody must vet what the machine produces. Steinberger says developer salaries were high because people who could build things were scarce, and that scarcity is ending. Vetting work is a job; it is not obvious it is enough of one to keep the entry rung on the ladder.
Shared subject first, then similar wording. They may agree or disagree.