Companies trained people because the math worked.

Companies trained people because the math worked.

Entry-level training was never charity. It was an investment with a payback period — junior hire today, mid-level producer in 18 months.

The math made sense when humans were the cheapest available labor for repetitive work.

AI just changed the input cost to near-zero.

Now the math says: skip the junior hire entirely. The senior team plus AI is cheaper and faster than the old training pipeline.

This isn't a values shift. It's a spreadsheet shift.

Careers worked because the math worked. The math just stopped working.