Senior roles vanishing. Junior roles extinct. Welcome to AI's "squeezed middle."
Entry-level has become a myth.
I worry for my sons’ generation (both are in university). How do they get a foot on to the ladder with less and less graduate positions, and every job being overwhelmed with 100s of applicants?
And what about senior positions?
Every job posting now seems to ask for 10+ years experience. But peek at the salary? They're paying for 10.
The result? We're dumping impossible expectations on relatively green talent. Experienced enough but not enough. The market is valuing potential over proven experience. Cost efficient, maybe. Smart? Jury’s out.
That 32-year-old just made VP? Five years leadership experience, max. Think about that - they haven’t even led through the pandemic, let alone navigated an economic downturn or financial crisis. Good luck with that.
Why hire junior when AI does the grunt work? Why pay senior when you can get "good enough" for 40% less?
Everyone’s stuck in the middle of a much shorter career ladder. With no way to get on, nowhere to go up to.
But here's what nobody's saying:
AI doesn't make inexperienced people experienced.
It makes smart people smarter. Experienced people faster.
Ultimately we’ll work through this. I can already see new models emerging. Start-ups based around fewer, more senior talent (often hired fractionally) guiding and interpreting AI based on their experience (let’s call them “context experts”).
And new ways to creat the next generation of AI-native “prompt experts”. For example, (quoting Asad Zaman in his Pavilion newsletter): “two years of AI-powered education (subsidised), then paid apprenticeships. Minimal debt, real skills, good wages by year three. The blueprint exists. IBM proved apprenticeships work in tech. Germany proved they work at scale.”
Companies that win will blend AI efficiency with human wisdom. They’ll need smart people at all levels and not just replace one cohort with another.
And in Asad’s own words, “we just need to admit the old system is dying, and build something better from its ashes.”