Companies are replacing junior roles with AI. They're not hiring grads. They're cutting the "learning" positions because, well, Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini can do the work faster.
In the short term, the math probably works. Fewer salaries. Faster output. Leaner teams.
But here's what I keep coming back to:
Where does the next generation of senior engineers come from? Of product leaders? Of the people who'll be making the hard calls in ten years?
It's not just cutting costs. It's cutting the pipeline.
I think about my own path. The mistakes I made that taught me what no AI could have. The slow accumulation of judgment that only comes from years of context, consequence, and correction.
Are we betting that AI will be good enough by then that none of this matters? That we won't need human judgment at the top because there won't be a top? That judgment, context, and experience become optional because the system itself replaces them.
This isn't about one company cutting costs or skipping junior hires. It's about what happens when an entire ecosystem stops training its future decision-makers.
The reckoning won't come this year. Maybe not next year either.
But gaps have a way of showing up exactly when you need the thing you stopped investing in.