The junior-developer pipeline is a slow-motion arithmetic problem (opens in new tab)

The two numbers I want to start with are these. Stack Overflow's monthly question volume fell from 108,563 in November 2022 (the month ChatGPT launched) to 25,566 by December 2024, a 76.5% drop, and by May 2025 monthly question volume had reverted to the level of Stack Overflow's first month in 2009. Brynjolfsson, Chandar and Chen's August 2025 Stanford Digital Economy paper, Canaries in the Coal Mine?, with data through July 2025, found that software-developer employment for the 22-to-25-yea...