Is AI Killing Entry-Level Jobs in Tech Companies Or Redefining Them?

Is AI Killing Entry-Level Jobs in Tech Companies Or Redefining Them?

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Entry-level jobs are the gloriously messy first rung on the career ladder. A safe space to make mistakes where the stakes are low, learn the details, and build the foundations that eventually prepare you for leadership.

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Fast forward to 2025, and AI is increasingly being tagged in to handle those ‘worker bee’ tasks once reserved for early careerists. From invoice processing to first-touch customer queries, the traditional stepping stones are being automated by AI in a bid to save time. 

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Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, told Axios in May 2025 that AI could wipe out half of entry-level jobs. If that’s true, it spikes our curiosity:

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What will happen to entry-level opportunities?

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Can you build truly experienced managers who never did the groundwork themselves?

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Or are we simply redefining what “entry-level” means in the AI era?

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The case for concern is that AI is not just hollowing out entry-level jobs, but wiping them out altogether. 

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There’s plenty of evidence suggesting AI is already chewing through junior roles:

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• Stanford research found US employment for early-career workers in AI-exposed fields (like customer service and software) has fallen substantially.

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• Ravio’s 2024–25 analysis showed a staggering 73% drop in hiring for entry-level (P1) roles, with the steepest declines in marketing, people & culture, engineering, product, and finance. That’s not just a slowdown, that’s a structural shift.

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• Goldman Sachs estimates up to 300 million jobs globally are exposed to AI automation, including many of the very admin and junior tech roles that gave people their first professional foothold.

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• Shopify has been clear in their vote for AI efficiency over hiring humans.  

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James O’Brien, a UC Berkeley professor, put it bluntly: “Why hire an undergraduate when AI is cheaper and quicker?”

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While that take might be a little extreme, the logic behind it is already redefining how teams take on certain tasks:

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Customer success → According to Sifted, Revolut and others are investing billions into AI agents that autonomously handle sales and support.

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Finance → Adam McArthur, CFO at 3P Learning, reveals their finance team have… “already started using it with things like invoicing, invoice processing and more manual tasks.” 

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Engineering → AI-generated code rivals graduate output, but improves in minutes rather than weeks.

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Marketing → Routine tasks like copywriting, analytics, and design are increasingly automated. As Rachel Fang, Global Marketing Director at Vudoo, put it: “AI has shifted marketing from ‘more hands’ to ‘smarter brains.’” 

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The worry is that the ladder is being kicked away. As Nick Benjamin, CTO at Envato, warns: “I don't know how we grow those junior individuals and early careerists to senior level. Because a lot of the activities that they typically will cut their teeth on to gain meaningful experience won’t really exist [in the future].”

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Can leaders of the future skip the groundwork and be just as effective? 

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Entry-level jobs aren’t just about getting tasks done. The stumbles and tackles of tough challenges help people build resilience, adaptability, and confidence that give leaders the knowledge and experience to scale a business and mentor leaders of the future. 

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AI has the potential to remove those obstacles. While, at first glance, that sounds idyllic… we risk future generations of leaders with fast-tracked promotions but shallow depths. As Adam McArthur warns: “You’ll have 30-year-olds who are senior leaders, but got there without doing the foundational tasks.” Leaders could become detached and naive when it comes to solving problems. 

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The maturity of the market is already causing a disconnect between the skills needed and those currently available. Laura Haines, CTPO, at Circular Economy Systems, believes “fewer people have access to mentoring, so while there are strong product managers, there’s a big gap in how they move into strategy, vision, leading teams.” If AI accelerates the disappearance of early development experiences, that gap will only widen.

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Time for some optimism, because entry-level isn’t dead yet, just different

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There’s also evidence pointing to AI as an amplifier, not a destroyer.

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• The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects that while 92 million jobs may be displaced by 2030, another 170 million will be created.

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• The 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report from LinkedIn & Microsoft revealed, found 90% of workers say AI saves them time, 85% say it helps them focus, and 83% say it makes them more creative.

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• Think & Grow’s 25/26 Australian Tech Salary Guide, shows AI directors in Australia earning upwards of $236,000, a sign that new specialist roles are booming.

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And we’re already seeing entry-level tasks evolve rather than vanish:

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Marketing → New roles like prompt engineers and marketing ops specialists are now “business-critical.” As Fang explains, “it’s also raising the bar: the baseline has moved up, so the value now lies in originality and judgement, not just execution.”

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Sales → Jamie Hoey, Country Manager at Wunderkind, highlights that filling junior roles remains tough: “filling the junior roles with people who have the right mix of skills, experience and personality”, proving that culture-fit is still important. He went on to share his belief that AI won’t be the end of all jobs, but an enhancer of some… “I don’t believe copywriters are a dying role, they’re actually well-positioned to use AI to optimize their tasks.”  

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Product → Inga Latham, CPO at Shippit, sees AI as a boom, not a bust: “Productivity and speed to market opportunity, and the role of AI in your product. It is comparable to the first .com boom in the early 2000s - except it’s moving faster and will have a much bigger impact.” 

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How do we design entry-level work for the AI era? 

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AWS CEO, Matt Garman, called replacing junior workers with AI “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.” This segment is the “least expensive” and “the most leaned on for AI tools”. 

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This side of the debate goes beyond the actual work. Young people in entry-level roles bring more to a business than AI ever could. They add purpose, belonging, and energy to workplaces where culture is critical for performance. Their enthusiasm and social connection help hold teams together and without them, team cultures will suffer.

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But, tech communities must act as quickly as AI itself is evolving. It’s not humans or AI. Here’s how we can rethink entry-level jobs in tandem with AI:

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1. Embrace AI for productivity, not replacement. Let juniors manage basic tasks with AI support, then use the freed-up time to solve bigger problems under mentorship.
2. Protect the pipeline. Rotate juniors through real-world projects, audits, and customer interactions to build strategic knowledge early.
3. Beware fake productivity: If your team is just passing documents back and forth through AI, you’re not creating new value, you’re just losing insight. Don’t let junior members of the team fall into that trap by avoiding it at the top.
4. Upskill the team in AI fluency: Make AI literacy the new baseline to avoid the business using it vaguely, without direction. Equip every new hire with training to support them in becoming experts at using ChatGPT, using AI writing tools and data analysis software. 
5. Reward human traits that can’t be automated: Creativity, collaboration, and empathy are examples. We need to make sure irreplaceable human characteristics continue to be valued in the workplace.
6. Push individual USPs: If everyone’s AI-literate, uniqueness becomes the edge. As Hoey asks: “How do you make yourself sticky and incredibly important to the business?”

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The AI revolution doesn’t have to be a bleak future with fewer people in fewer jobs. It can be smarter people doing higher-value work, with complex thinking starting earlier in their careers. Entry-level roles may never look the same again. But if we’re deliberate, they can still be the launchpad for the next generation of tech leaders with AI speeding us up, not hollowing us out.

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Download the full 25/26 Australian Tech Salary Guide here. 

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