alt Hacker NewsI partly agree. Agents are not going to replace senior devs. Exactly for the internal context and the decision making that comes with it.
But senior devs are also expected to have a compounding effect even pre-AI. Writing a single doc, refactoring legacy code to make it extensible, building security frameworks specific to the project and many more. All of these would compound the dev team.
I think the same will happen with agents working on a org specific paved path set by senior devs.
They will (and already have) replace low-performing senior developers because a single high-performance senior developer can do a lot more than they used to.
I have personally noticed this a lot how multiple people can work on the same problem, but the more senior developers get way more miledge out of AI compared to those that are early in their carreers.
Another difference I've noticed is how many agents one can keep running without losing awareness.
It generally just raised the bar on what management will expect from developers which will result in a shrinking workforce. The only ones that will benefit are AI companies and the upper management since less employees means less management so lower management will get screwed too.