I spend a ton of time mentoring Jrs in FOSS communities, but I confess as a startup founder myself I could simply not justify hiring anyone but self-directed seniors until we are profitable enough to set some money on fire for what would effectively be just a long term investment in creating a few new Srs. But Jr hiring will never again be what it was unless it gets subsidized somehow as partial charity.
We need to continue the tradition of elevating humans through mentoring or we won’t have a future scaffolding for work to be done.