--- title: "AI Threatens Entry Level Job Pipeline | Metaintro" canonical: "https://www.metaintro.com/blog/ai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline" language: "en" author: "laceykaelani" published: "2025-10-10T11:30:00.000Z" modified: "2026-10-02T19:12:32.196Z" --- [Back to Blog](/blog) [Jobs](/blog/tag/jobs)[AI](/blog/tag/ai) # AI Threatens Entry Level Job Pipeline Stripe's AI chief warns traditional career ladder is disappearing as companies replace entry-level roles with AI. Even as she hires more PhDs, concerns grow about Gen Z talent pipeline. [![Lacey Kaelani](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:40:40/q:72/plain/images/2934b90b-ca20-4439-bc56-71b4f5733545_1766029465094.png)Lacey Kaelani @laceykaelani](/blog/author/laceykaelani) [October 10, 2025](/blog/archive/2025/10)Updated October 2, 20265 min read ![AI Threatens Entry Level Job Pipeline](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:1200:675/q:78/plain/images/laptopondesk-1.png) [https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=AI%20Threatens%20Entry%20Level%20Job%20Pipeline&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline](https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=AI%20Threatens%20Entry%20Level%20Job%20Pipeline&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline)[http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline)[https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline&title=AI%20Threatens%20Entry%20Level%20Job%20Pipeline](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline&title=AI%20Threatens%20Entry%20Level%20Job%20Pipeline)[mailto:?subject=AI%20Threatens%20Entry%20Level%20Job%20Pipeline&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline](mailto:?subject=AI%20Threatens%20Entry%20Level%20Job%20Pipeline&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-threatens-entry-level-job-pipeline) The bottom rung of the career ladder is disappearing, and even executives doing the hiring are worried. Emily Glassberg Sands, [Stripe's](https://stripe.com/) head of Data and AI, revealed on the Forward Future podcast that she's hiring more new graduates than ever before, particularly PhDs with cutting-edge AI skills. But she's simultaneously "sweating" about what happens to the next generation of workers. "They have the cutting edge skills, and they come in with fresh ideas, and they know how to think, and they know how to use the latest tools," Glassberg Sands said about her recent PhD hires. Yet she's deeply concerned about the talent pipeline for traditional software engineering and other entry-level positions. The problem is stark: AI is eliminating the very jobs that young workers need to climb the career ladder. ## Where Are All the Entry-Level Jobs? Companies like [Goldman Sachs](https://www.goldmansachs.com/) and [Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/) have been replacing essential entry-level roles with AI agents and chatbots. Junior analyst positions, basic software engineering jobs, and other starting positions that once served as training grounds are getting automated away. This creates a dangerous paradox. Glassberg Sands is hiring highly educated PhDs precisely because they arrive with advanced expertise. But how do you build a pipeline of experienced professionals if no one can get their foot in the door? "It would be unfortunate if we woke up in 10 years with no pipeline," Glassberg Sands warned. The concern centers on mentorship and development. If companies only hire people who already have cutting-edge skills, where do those skills get developed in the first place? Some AI leaders have been even more dire in their predictions. [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/) CEO Dario Amodei and former Google X chief business officer Mo Gawdat have warned that advanced AI will trigger a white-collar jobs apocalypse, wiping out entire categories of professional work. ## The Skills Era Faces Extinction Here's where things get really concerning. Over the past few years, billion-dollar companies like [Workday](https://www.workday.com/) and [JPMorgan](https://www.jpmorgan.com/) switched to skills-based hiring, prioritizing specific capabilities over traditional college degrees. The idea was to find top talent with the most advanced expertise regardless of educational pedigree. But Glassberg Sands is now warning that the entire era of skills-based hiring may be coming to an end, killed by the very technology that was supposed to make specialized skills more valuable. "Why does design exist, data science exist, engineering exist? Those functions exist because they required specialized skills," Glassberg Sands explained. "But increasingly, a bunch of these specialized skills are augmentable or doable by AI." Translation: The skills that once made you valuable and employable are being automated. Design work, data science, engineering—all the specialized capabilities that justified entire departments and career tracks are becoming things that AI can handle. Ryan Roslansky, CEO of [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/), echoed these concerns. He cautioned that employers are moving away from candidates with Ivy League degrees or traditional skills. Instead, they're hunting for AI-savvy talent with the adaptability to keep up with constantly evolving ways of working. But here's the catch: if entry-level jobs disappear, how do people develop the experience and adaptability that employers will demand? You can't adapt to AI-driven workflows if you never get hired in the first place. ## A Mentorship Crisis Looms Glassberg Sands identified another critical problem: mentorship. Even as [Stripe](https://stripe.com/) brings in highly educated PhDs, she worries about whether there will be enough experienced professionals to guide them. When companies eliminate entry-level and mid-level positions, they create gaps in institutional knowledge. Senior leaders end up managing teams of freshly minted PhDs without the middle layers of experienced professionals who traditionally mentored junior staff. This isn't just bad for individual career development. It threatens the entire knowledge transfer system that has powered innovation for decades. Skills, judgment, and institutional wisdom get passed down through mentorship. Break that chain, and you risk losing critical capabilities that can't be learned from textbooks or AI assistants. ## Gen Z Bears the Brunt Recent graduates are feeling the squeeze most acutely. They're entering a labor market where: - Entry-level positions are vanishing to AI automation - Many hiring managers doubt Gen Z's workplace competency - Companies demand advanced skills but offer fewer opportunities to develop them - Traditional career paths that once led to senior positions are disappearing The situation creates a cruel Catch-22. Employers want workers who can immediately contribute at a high level with cutting-edge AI skills. But they're eliminating the starter positions where people traditionally learned on the job and built expertise over time. For Gen Z specifically, the challenge is existential. This generation is graduating into a fundamentally different labor market than any previous generation faced. The entry-level jobs their parents and older siblings used to launch careers simply don't exist in the same numbers anymore. The warnings from someone like Glassberg Sands, who is actively hiring graduates, are particularly sobering. If even the executives bringing new people on board are worried about the sustainability of the talent pipeline, something is seriously broken in how the labor market is evolving. Want more hiring news like this? Subscribe to our weekly job market briefing. Looking for a new job? 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