“If organizations focus only on short-term efficiency… they risk eroding the next generation of tech leaders”: Microsoft executives say senior employees must mentor juniors to fix AI mistakes

• Companies risk future skills shortages if they stop hiring junior developers today, Microsoft executives say
• AI promises productivity gains, but we need humans to control agents
• Human-AI collaboration is more important than the amount of code

Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich and Developer Community VP Scott Hanselman have argued that senior engineers must actively mentor junior workers to avoid future skills shortages, suggesting that AI coding agents disproportionately affect younger and newer workers.

In a research paper, the two executives describe how AI coding assistants can increase the productivity of senior engineers.