Recent graduates are clearly not okay—but neither are the companies that decided they could do without them. Isaac, 33, has been a mid-level software development engineer at a Big Tech firm for four years, and noticed entry-level job postings dropping at his workplace at the start of 2025. The work, however, didn’t vanish with them. Tasks once handled by junior engineers—like writing and testing code, fixing bugs, and contributing to development projects—were absorbed by senior staff, often with the assumption that AI would make up the difference.And while AI has sped up the velocity of shipping code and features, there are fewer people to do tasks like designing, testing, and working with stakeholders, which AI has zero grasp on. The cracks have been hard to ignore. “Seniors are burning out, and when they leave, there’s no rush to replace them, because ‘the AI will do it’!” Isaac says. Worried that he’ll become the next strung-out senior, he’s looking for his exit, ideally at a smaller tech firm. (Isaac spoke to Fast Company under a pseudonym to avoid possible retaliation.)