Plus: How Meta bottled senior judgment
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LeadDev Originals
Weekly words and voices on engineering leadership

Are AI-coding tools breaking the junior engineer pipeline?

A University of New South Wales study found AI tools make students’ code better. Test what they actually learned, and the result flips.

The study is small. The question it raises isn’t: If juniors can ship good work before they understand it, where do your future seniors come from?

One answer is to keep the tools but never let a junior work alone.

LeadDev Managing Editor, Michael Hill
Articles















A I

AI-coding tools could be breaking the junior engineer pipeline

AI helps juniors code, not learn... and that’s a problem.
3 mins • Chris Stokel-Walker

S O F T W A R E  Q U A L I T Y
Meta turned engineers’ judgment into agent skills
Expert judgment is now a reusable skill (apparently).
6 mins • Bill Doerrfeld

V E L O C I T Y
Faster code isn’t faster delivery
Fast code, slow reviews.
6 mins • Emma Bostian

S O F T W A R E. Q U A L I T Y
The engineering gap hiding in your database
Years without incidents proves nothing.
8 mins • Dmitry Moskalyuk

L E A D E R S H I P
Your junior engineers are getting faster but are they getting better?
Speed helps this quarter. Understanding lasts years.
7 mins • Garima Agarwal
Digital events

O C T O B E R
21
• W O R K S H O PP
Prove your AI gains, then improve them
Turn real usage data into a clear read on your agents’ ROI – and a plan to improve it.

O C T O B E R 22 • P A N E L
The truth about engineering team performance in 2026
What your metrics are actually measuring, and what they’re missing. Preregister for the Engineering Team Performance Report 2026!


O C T O B E R 15 • P A N E L
Controlling your AI software factory
How do you stay in control of systems that never stop evolving?

O C T O B E R 14 • P A N E L
Inside the engineering finance paradox
The CFO discussion is coming. Here’s how engineering leaders can prepare for it.



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Events

LeadDev Berlin – November 9 & 10

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