Every senior developer was once a junior: someone allowed to be slow, to ask obvious questions, and to learn the craft on the job over five or six years. Generative AI is quietly cancelling that deal, and hardly anyone is asking what happens next. This pitch follows that under-told story from a human angle: the collapse of the developer career ladder. Five interactive charts, all built from current open data, make one argument. AI tools went from novelty to default among developers in two years (Stack Overflow: 70% to 84%). Employers now ask for AI skills in their ads (Indeed Hiring Lab). Then the twist: software development postings have collapsed since 2022, down 56% in Australia and 68% in the US, while "AI-proof" work like nursing held steady. The firms still hiring want experience juniors can't have yet, and Stanford finds employment among 22-to-25-year-old developers already down about 20%. Finally, a transparent scenario model asks the title's question: if seniors are grown from juniors over roughly six years, and we stopped hiring juniors in 2022, the senior shortage of the 2030s is already on the books. Most AI coverage asks "will AI take my job?" This asks the quieter, scarier one: if AI takes the entry-level job, who's left to become the expert? It speaks straight to your student and early-career readers, it carries an Australian angle, and it lands on something useful: the fix, hiring and training juniors now, is cheap and available. The window isn't.