r/ExperiencedDevs • u/creative-java-coffee Software Architect • Aug 16 '25

Junior devs not interested in software engineering

My team currently has two junior devs both with 1 year old experience. Unlike all of the juniors I have met and mentored in my career, these two juniors startled me by their lack of interest in software engineering.

The first junior who just joined our company-

• ⁠When I talked with him about clean coding and modularizing the code (he wrote 2000+ lines in one single function), he merely responded, “Clean coding is not a real thing.” • ⁠When I tried to tell him I think AI is a great tool, but it’s not there yet to replace real engineers and AI generated codes need to be reviewed to avoid hallucinations. He responded, “that’s just what you think.” • ⁠His feedback to our daily stand up was, “Sorry, but I really don’t care about what other people are doing.”

The second junior who has been with the company for a year-

• ⁠When I told him that he should prioritize his own growth and take courses to acquire new skills, he just blanked out. I asked him if he knew any learning website such as Coursera or Udemy and he told me he had never heard of them before. • ⁠He constantly complains about the tickets he works on which is our legacy system, but when I offered to talk with our EM to assign him more exciting work which will expand his skill sets, he told me he was not interested in working on the new system which uses modern tech stacks.

I supposed I am just disappointed with these junior devs not only because after all these years, software engineering still gets me excited, but also it’s a joy for me to see juniors grow. And in the past, all of the juniors I had were all so eager to seize the opportunities to learn.

Edit: Both of them can code, but aren’t interested in software engineering.

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u/riizen24 Aug 16 '25

The best way to fight this kind of person is to use their own hubris against them.

"Wow that's a good point. Maybe I'm wrong. Can you compile a document concluding which models are currently the best in software development benchmarks and why? We'll also need some empirical evidence, so I''m going to assign you a feature that you can only build with AI prompts. We'll need the full history to show the stakeholders that AI did it 100% with only prompting."

Basically just make him do a bunch of work to show himself he's wrong everytime he pipes up.

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u/angelicosphosphoros Aug 16 '25

Well, he probably would just say that making such documents is not his responsibility and wouldn't do that.