Current CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Antonio Neri rose from call center agent at the company to chief executive officer. Doug McMillon, Walmart CEO, started off with a summer gig helping to unload trucks. It’s a similar story for GM CEO Mary Barra, who began on the assembly line at the automaker as an 18-year old. Those are the kinds of career ladder success arcs that have inspired workers, and Hollywood, but as AI is set to replace many entry-level jobs, it may also write that corporate character out of the plot.
The rise of AI has coincided with considerable organizational flattening, especially among middle management ranks. At the same time, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is among those who forecast 50% of entry-level jobs may be wiped out by AI as the technology improves, including being able to work eight-hour shifts without a break.
All the uncertainty in the corporate org chart introduced by AI — occurring at a time when college graduates are struggling to find roles — raises the question of whether the career ladder is about to be broken, and the current generation of corporate leaders’ tales of ascent that have always made up an important part of the corporate American ethos set to become a thing of the past. If the notion of going from the bottom to the top has always been more the exception than the rule, it has helped pump the heart of America’s corporations. In the least, removing the first rung on the ladder raises important questions about the transfer of institutional knowledge and upward advancement in organizations.
Looking at data between 2019 and 2024 for the biggest public tech firms and maturing venture-capital funded startups, venture capital firm SignalFire found in a study there was a 50% decline in new role starts by people with less than one year of post-graduate work experience: “Hiring is intrinsically volatile year on year, but 50% is an accurate representation of the hiring delta for this experience category over the considered timespan,” said Asher Bantock, head of research at SignalFire. The data ranged across core business functions — sales, marketing, engineering, recruiting/HR, operations, design, finance and legal — with the 50% decline consistent across the board.
But Heather Doshay, partner at SignalFire, says the data should not lead job seekers to lose hope. “The loss of clear entry points doesn’t just shrink opportunities for new grads — it reshapes how organizations grow talent from within,” she said.
If, as Amodei told CNBC earlier this year, “At some point, we are going to get to AI systems that are better than almost all humans at almost all tasks,” the critical question for workers is how the idea of an entry-level job can evolve as AI continues to.
Flatter organizations seem certain. “The ladder isn’t broken — it’s just being replaced with something that looks a lot flatter,” Doshay said. In her view, the classic notion of a CEO rising from the mailroom is a perfect example since at many company’s it’s been a long time since anyone worked in an actual mailroom. “The bottom rung is disappearing,” she said, “but that has the potential to uplevel everyone.”
The new “entry level” might be a more advanced or skilled role, but with the upskilling of the bottom rung, pressure is being created for new grads to acquire these job skills on their own, rather than being able to learn them while already on a job they can’t land today. That should not be a career killer, though, according to Doshay.
“When the internet and email came on the scene as common corporate required skills, new grads were well-positioned to become experts by using them in school, and the same absolutely applies here with how accessible AI is,” she said. “The key will be in how new grads harness their capabilities to become experts so they are seen as desirable tech-savvy workers who are at the forefront of AI’s advances,” she said.
But she concedes that may not offer much comfort to the current crop of recent grads looking for jobs right now. “My heart goes out to the new grads of 2024, 2025, and 2026, as they are entering during a time of uncertainty,” Doshay said, describing it is a much more vulnerable group entering the workforce than ones further into the future.
Universities are turning their schools into AI training grounds, with several institutions striking major deals with companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.
“Historically, technological advancements have not harmed employment rates in the long run, but there are short-term impacts along the way,” Doshay said. “The entry-level careers of recent graduates are most affected, which could have lasting effects as they continue to grow their careers with less experience while finding fewer job opportunities,” she added.
Anders Humlum, assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago, says predictions about AI’s long-term labor market impact remain highly speculative, and firms are only just beginning to adjust to the new generative AI landscape. “We now have two and a half years of experience with generative AI chatbots diffusing widely throughout the economy,” Humlum said, adding “these tools have really not made a significant difference for employment or earnings in any occupation thus far.”
Looking at the history of labor and technology, he says even the most transformative technologies, such as steam power, electricity, and computers took decades to generate large-scale economic effects. As a result, any reshaping of the corporate structure and culture will take time to become clear.
“Even if Amodei is correct that AI tools will eventually match the technical capabilities of many entry-level white-collar workers, I believe his forecast underestimates both the time required for workflow adjustments and the human ability to adapt to the new opportunities these tools create,” Humlum said.
But a key challenge for businesses is ensuring that the benefits of these tools are broadly shared across the workforce. In particular, Humlum said, his research shows a substantial gender gap in the use of generative AI. “Employers can significantly reduce this gap by actively encouraging adoption and offering training programs to support effective use,” he said.
Other AI researchers worry that the biggest issue won’t be the career ladder at the lowest rung, but ultimately, the stability of any rung at all, all the way to the top.
If predictions about AI advancements ultimately leading to superintelligence are proven correct, Max Tegmark, president of the Future of Life Institute, says the issue isn’t going to be about whether the 50% entry-level jobs being wiped out is accurate, but that percentage growing to 100% for all careers, “since superintelligence can by definition do all jobs better than us,” he said.
In that world, even if you were the last call center, distribution center or assembly line worker to make it to the CEO desk, your days of success might be numbered. “If we continue racing ahead with totally unregulated AI, we’ll first see a massive wealth and power concentration from workers to those who control the AI, and then to the machines themselves as their owners lose control over them,” Tegmark said.
