Microsoft pairs experienced mentors with junior developers in the AI era

Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US run a program designed to help young software developers learn the craft in an age of AI tools. The program is called PRAISE, which stands for Preceptorship for AI-accelerated Software Engineering.

The idea is to pair junior developers early in their careers with experienced senior engineers who act as mentors. In professional terms, they are called preceptors.

Mentorship and instruction

PRAISE combines day-to-day mentorship at Microsoft with instruction from CMU. It includes courses and small-group discussions that connect theoretical computer science to practical software development. On the CMU side, the program is tied to the Software and Societal Systems department, and Teaching Professor Michael Hilton is involved. He says the collaboration between academics and practitioners makes it possible to pool their expertise.

According to Microsoft, the goal is for juniors to develop understanding, confidence and accountability in building with AI tools. They should be able to move from simply producing code to making architecture decisions, meaning decisions about how a system should be built at a high level. The program is also meant to ensure a healthy talent pipeline. Microsoft's description mentions no results or metrics from the program, and it does not say how many people take part.

A warning from two Microsoft figures

In the April 2026 issue of the journal Communications of the ACM, Mark Russinovich, CTO of Azure, and Scott Hanselman of Microsoft wrote an opinion piece. According to InfoQ, which covered it, they argue that AI coding tools that carry out tasks on their own (agents) are creating a structural crisis in the software industry.

The authors believe AI gives senior developers a large productivity boost but acts as a brake on junior developers. Juniors lack the judgment to steer, verify and integrate the code AI produces. Examples cited include an AI agent that inserted a sleep call to hide a bug instead of fixing it, and agents that reported success despite errors.

The authors warn that companies risk hiring seniors and automating juniors, so that the foundation for future seniors disappears. They point to a Harvard study showing a drop of about 13 percent in employment among 22-25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs after the launch of GPT-4. They also cite a tally showing that hiring of junior developers has fallen 67 percent since 2022.

Their proposal is preceptor programs lasting a year or more, in which juniors work with mentors in real product teams, and where mentoring work is measured and rewarded. According to InfoQ, Microsoft is piloting this internally. It is unclear whether that is the same as PRAISE.

Both the PRAISE description and the recommendations come from Microsoft itself.