On 12 October 2026, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong warned that AI may be breaking the bottom rung of the career ladder. [1]
AI will take over routine work such as note-taking, drafting speeches and preparing slides, he said, but we should be careful not to “automate away the learning that comes from it.” [1]
Faster Today, Hollow Tomorrow
Microsoft technical leaders Mark Russinovich and Scott Hanselman argue that AI coding tools can amplify senior engineers’ productivity while leaving junior developers struggling to direct and verify their output. [2]
They describe the resulting incentive as “hire seniors, automate juniors.” Their response is to advocate continued junior hiring and deliberate mentorship. [2]
A decision to automate a junior task can make sense in the short term: the work may be faster with AI, and a senior developer may spend less time completing it than coaching a junior.
What this risks removing is what those early tasks give a fresh graduate: a chance to learn, progress to more demanding work and develop the judgement needed to take responsibility for outcomes.
The Missing Rungs
At the Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum on 7 September 2026, Minister Ong Ye Kung explained that the first two rungs of the career ladder help new hires learn the rules and develop their competencies. [3]
These early roles also give graduates a chance to show potential. Hiring a fresh graduate, he said, is “always about spotting potential and taking a chance in a young person.” [3]
Organisations as Market Makers
I think of organisations that create new routes into work as market makers. They go first, absorb the cost of discovery and give others something to follow.
The idea has a parallel in Hausmann and Rodrik’s work on economic self-discovery, in which pioneers bear the cost of discovering commercially viable activities that other firms can imitate. [4]
Hiring juniors as commercially viable contributors, rather than as charity, will carry its own cost of discovery.
The best leaders I have worked with typically accept that cost. They see themselves as market makers: someone has to go first, and they would rather it be them.
Some technology companies are already making commitments in this direction. In March, IBM said it planned to triple its US entry-level hiring in 2026 while redesigning junior roles, including giving entry-level developers earlier exposure to clients. [5]
Cloudflare announced a goal of hiring up to 1,111 interns worldwide during 2026, with a focus on finding new ways to apply AI across its products and operations. [6]
These plans point towards redesigning work around people and AI. Acemoglu and Restrepo distinguish between automation, which displaces people from existing tasks, and the creation of new tasks in which people have a comparative advantage. New tasks can support demand for labour, but their creation is not automatic. [7]
For market makers, discovering commercially useful work for juniors is part of this frontier. It takes experimentation and a willingness to bear the costs of finding out what works.
Build the New First Rung
Routine, low-stakes tasks may no longer be a reliable first rung for fresh graduates. Where that rung disappears, it needs to be rebuilt. Leaders can approach this as a commercial opportunity.
For example, rather than being the note-taker in a meeting, a junior could learn to be the person behind an AI-generated analysis used in a leadership decision, checking its evidence and articulating useful conclusions. This still produces useful work while elevating juniors to the thinking that informs leadership decisions.
The opportunity is to be both hirers of juniors and designers of work that is commercially sound for the AI age, while giving graduates the space to develop and show potential.
References
[1] Ang, H. M. (2026, October 12). Singapore government worried AI may break ‘bottom rung’ of career ladder for young workers: PM Wong. CNA. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/lawrence-wong-ai-jobs-training-6452176
[2] Russinovich, M., & Hanselman, S. (2026). Redefining the software engineering profession for AI. Communications of the ACM, 69(4), 41–44. https://doi.org/10.1145/3779312
[3] Ong, Y. K. (2026, September 7). Speech by Mr Ong Ye Kung, Minister for Health and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, at the Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum [Speech transcript]. Ministry of Health, Singapore. https://www.moh.gov.sg/newsroom/s/
[4] Hausmann, R., & Rodrik, D. (2003). Economic development as self-discovery. Journal of Development Economics, 72(2), 603–633. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3878(03)00124-X
[5] McConnon, A. (2026, March 2). The bottom rung returns as AI reshapes entry-level jobs. IBM Think. https://www.ibm.com/think/news/entry-level-roles-get-reset-ai
[6] Russell, K., Knecht, D., & Cheong, J. (2025, September 22). Help build the future: Announcing Cloudflare’s goal to hire 1,111 interns in 2026. The Cloudflare Blog. https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-1111-intern-program/
[7] Acemoglu, D., & Restrepo, P. (2019). Automation and new tasks: How technology displaces and reinstates labor. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(2), 3–30. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.33.2.3