employment
Building on Quicksand
The accelerating deployment of AI reveals three critical challenges: our infrastructure is inadequate, monopolization threatens resilience, and we're eliminating entry-level career pathways. But the same maintenance backlogs that companies defer also represent an overlooked opportunity—if we choose to use AI to address them rather than eliminate the workers who would learn from them.
The Entry-Level Extinction
AI is decimating entry-level employment globally. U.S. programmer employment fell 27.5% between 2023 and 2025. Entry-level hiring at the 15 biggest tech firms dropped 25%. This isn't just an employment problem—it's an institutional knowledge crisis. Organizations can't promote from within if there's no 'within' to promote from.