It sounds like Aurornis was not, in fact, trying to hire people at the entry level.
Most companies doing regular, non-ML development hire a mix of junior and experienced engineers, with the latter providing code reviews, mentorship and architectural advice alongside normal programming duties.
It's understandable that someone kicking off a new ML project would hope to get the experienced hires on board first.
But there are a lot more junior people on the market than senior people right now - as is the nature of a fast growing market.
I agree, it's problematic that there are so many more juniors than seniors in the industry right now. I feel like many juniors are being left without mentorship, and then it becomes much harder for them to grow and eventually become qualified for senior roles. So that could help explain why many candidates seem so weak, alongside with all the recent hype.
I guess eventually the market will cool off and the hype will die down since this stuff seems to be cyclical, and the junior engineers who are determined enough to stick it out and seek out mentorship will be able to grow and become seniors.
But it definitely seems like the number of seniors is a bottleneck for talent across the industry.
Most companies doing regular, non-ML development hire a mix of junior and experienced engineers, with the latter providing code reviews, mentorship and architectural advice alongside normal programming duties.
It's understandable that someone kicking off a new ML project would hope to get the experienced hires on board first.
But there are a lot more junior people on the market than senior people right now - as is the nature of a fast growing market.