JE

Joy Ebertz

Things Joy Says on Podcasts

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Joy Ebertz has been a guest on The InfoQ Podcast .

Recently: “What Does It Really Mean To Program With AI: A Conversation with Joy Ebertz” on The InfoQ Podcast (October 2026).

What They Said

“I honestly don't know if I would tell somebody to go into CS today. Because there's also most companies at the moment are just not hiring junior engineers, too, which also feels short-sighted. At some point, everybody's going to retire out of the workforce, and who are they going to have left?” — Joy Ebertz, The InfoQ Podcast

Michael Stiefel asked what advice senior engineers should give children heading to college now that AI writes so much code. Ebertz, an engineering leader, says she isn't sure computer science is still the right bet, and that the industry's freeze on junior hiring stores up a problem for later.

The InfoQ Podcast · 2026-10-12 Permalink → Listen →
The InfoQ Podcast Around 13:26 into the episode
Joy Ebertz

Yeah.

Michael Stiefel

Or do you tell them, and I've had this conversation with many people who are senior engineers and have children going into college, and what advice do they give them? There's more to it than just telling the AI what to do.

Joy Ebertz

Yeah, I honestly don't know if I would tell somebody to go into CS today. Because there's also like most companies at the moment are just not hiring junior engineers, too, which also feels short-sighted. Like at some point, everybody's going to retire out of the workforce, and who are they going to have left? But yeah,

Michael Stiefel

where are all the COBOL programmers? I mean, I mean, yeah. Somebody once said to me, I mean, we have a discussion. Some companies are still hiring junior engineers because they're cheaper than all the tokens they need to produce the cup. Yeah. But at some point, that won't be the case. So, you…

Joy Ebertz

Yeah.

Michael Stiefel

This is something that somebody's going to have to figure out. And neither you nor I seem to have the answer to that. I'm not surprised, but it's going to have to emerge. I think what's going to happen is people could just have to bite the bullet and not assign certain problems to AI to just train…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode
“I also have had cases where I'm like, fix this test. And the AI was like, okay, I'll delete the test. And I'm like, well, technically, we don't have broken tests now, but not what I meant.” — Joy Ebertz, The InfoQ Podcast

Ebertz is explaining why AI-generated code and AI-maintained tests need to be kept apart. Her team's agent instruction files now spell out rules like "don't just delete tests."

The InfoQ Podcast · 2026-10-12 Permalink → Listen →
The InfoQ Podcast Around 06:55 into the episode
Joy Ebertz

that. I don't know that I have great insights, but when I first started playing with AI, one of the first things one of my teammates was like, look, it's great. It generates the code and then it fixes all the tests it broke. And I was like, wait a minute, like just doing whatever it wants.

Michael Stiefel

You could write it, assert true, and then the test passes. Yeah,

Joy Ebertz

exactly. And I also have had cases where I'm like, fix this test. And the AI was like, okay, I'll delete the test. And I'm like, well, technically, we don't have broken tests now, but not what I meant. So I think we do need to figure that out. I mean, I think you can still have AI generate tests, but I think you need to make sure that it's separate or there's clear commands that like as a part of this rewrite, you don't touch any of the tests or, you know, much clearer on that side than we are right now. In general, at least. I know like our code base, we now have in our like agent files things like, you know, don't just delete tests and things like that. I

Michael Stiefel

mean, this is one of the places where you've talked about avoiding perfectionism, but here's almost the place where you have to be perfect or aim for perfectionism, especially on the tests end, because if you're going to rely on the AI to generate the code, all right, there regenerates slop. Okay…

Joy Ebertz

Yeah, it's interesting because I guess like, and this is a shift in thinking in general, is like previously you would have an old system. And like, even if there were like small bugs or it was really annoying to maintain, sometimes it was worth just not touching because you didn't know what the…

Michael Stiefel

Well, let me tell you, I've been doing this since around 1982. And we still in those days said we're not writing enough documentation. So, I mean, this is a problem, especially as the speed of development increases.

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