Hey David! I don't disagree that juniors should be developing their skills to a world-class level including 100% test coverage with a CI/CD pipelines in at least 1 if not all portfolio projects.

However, in the US most people are only a few months away from homelessness, and most junior devs can't afford 6-12 months of unemployment.

In my book Career Programming, I actually recommend freelancing and specializing only in a small set of skills (say frontend technologies and TDD), but when I talk to junior devs they tend to say BUT I NEED A JOB RITE NOW I CANNOT WAIT 1-3 YEARS OF FREELANCING AHHH.

The idea with QA is that many QA teams are also writing the test automation, and American employers rarely hire anyone without at least a year of full-time work experience.

It's a Catch-22 for junior devs who can't or won't freelance, and at least on my team adding an inexperienced dev as the 3rd person doing QA would be a lot more efficient than hiring that dev to develop components incorrectly.