System.out.println("Hello, World!”);
As a junior developer who recently joined the tech industry it's been very.. chaotic, and a little overwhelming. Some ideas I had about software engineering were quickly corrected and my confidence levels took a roller coaster ride, where some days I felt like I was just born on this Earth. It's no question AI is here to stay, although it has been consistently turbulent and I've gone through phases of how I've delt with the speed of change.
I started coding in 2020 before agentic coding existed, this is where I fell in love with programming. I took my first Java course, learned DSA, and soon was off with leetcode. Taking hours debugging code and learning how to read assembly was difficult, but THAT's what made it FUN! When my code compiled and I could press submit after constant fighting with a Hello World program I thought I was unstoppable, and I had enough dopamine to carry me through the next week. I loved every second of it.
Perfect, after worrying about career choices I had found software engineering and after four years of learning to program I was ready to get my first big boy job.. right? Well, maybe the world had different plans. I was starting my last year of university when OpenAI launched it's chat, and as a student that was pretty neat, who needs to debug when you can copy-paste into chat WOOHOO! There was worry at the time about our future, but most people were riding the high of this new technology (very fair). While the technology was cool, shaking the world when I'm looking at the front door.. after years of learning to program... LESS cool 😅. I went from watching Google day in the life videos to begging on my hands and knees for a job. Grinding leetcode day in day out, writing my resume 1 245 323 times, writing cover letters that didn't get a glance.
So, I was desperate. After a year unemployed with about 3 interviews and no offers, I had to change something. My mental state had been in constant decline. A friend of mine was taking up the new hot trend of "vibe coding" and asked if I would like to help make an app. With the early days of Cursor and a dream we were off, vibing the days away as I tried to keep my hands on the steering wheel. Fast forward 7 months and I had launched my first app on the App Store. While this was pretty cool and I loved working on a larger project, the publishing step was quite underwhelming. I felt like a lot of the coding challenges has become trivial, and watching my friend with no previous programming experience able to build out features was a large hit to my ego. Why did I go to school for four years? Are my skills even useful? How could I possibly differentiate myself? How does it make sense that agentic coding is becoming more popular, but I still have to reverse a linked list like the stone age in an interview?
Thankfully, all that time was not wasted. A local company has listed a job description that described me exactly. I sent in my resume and like all the others, expected nothing but a void of silence or an "unfortunately" email added to my inbox. Then the phone rang.
"Can you come in today?"
Today? How am I supposed to complete 100 leetcode questions and forget all the practice in that time? I don't have time to overthink every possible question for the next 2 weeks and stress myself out? Okay, it can't be that bad, I'll just walk in, nail it, be out in an hour max, then I can go back to sending applications into the void!
"Yes, of course!" :)
Put on a tie, snagged my resume, and I was off.
At this point my confidence was at an all time low in my life. I walked in feeling like I was worth 2 cents, and had never been more nervous in my life. I sat down in front of two developers and went through some common behavioural/experience questions for about an hour. At this point things felt okay, but then I saw the laptop open. The TV of doom turned on. Game time. No leetcode, but I stumbled through a backend problem for about 15 minutes, then took on the frontend question (much better). Okay cool, the laptop closes and I've been around for about 1.5 hours which I'm starting to think is a good sign. I end up immediately interviewing with another member of the company, then out the door I went. The next morning I had an offer waiting for me, and I went to sign the papers.
WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
In less than 24 hours I went from unemployed app publisher, to junior software developer.
This transition was the most difficult mentally. I didn't know If I was supposed to use AI tools or write code by hand. I had never written code for anyone else, so all expectations were unknown. To be completely honest, I struggled for the first while. It took me about 8 months to feel confident in my role and to truly be able to think clearly. After going through so many rejections, constantly questioning my skills, then being challenged on the job, my brain was mashed potatoes and needed to fundamentally be rebuilt (unfortunatey this doesn't happen over night).
I am finally happy and understand my place in this industry. I have a much clearer perspective and have found a steady balance between using agentic coding for efficiency, while sticking to the basics when I'm trying to learn a new skill. Coding by hand is still fun and I will continue to craft personal projects with the same grueling debugging as my early days, but for practical work and progress there is no doubt using AI is here to stay. The speed and efficiency it provides cannot be neglected, even though it takes away some enjoyment.
Moving Forward
The main issue I see with AI is it's ability to steal your critical thinking skills. The quick answers are great in the moment, until you realize you're forgetting how to code and have trouble forming your own thoughts (believe it or not, sometimes you shouldn't hear "You're absolutely right! What a briliant insight" when you tell an LLM that you should rewrite all your variable names in french). To keep my brain sharp I'm trying to do things like write essays without assistance, finish leetcode problems by hand, read articles, etc. and disable things like the AI overview on google on my personal computer.
While each day feels like a gold rush, I'm very happy to have found some mental space. For a while I felt paralyzed, but reflecting on your progress and managing a healthy lifestyle are so important in your ability to grow. Challenge yourself daily, challenge your thoughts, try new things, and remember there are more things to life than the newest model release (which btw is totally going to replace all developers and human capabilities before you get back to your laptop)!
