the entry-level job at your company now requires judgement you have never written down.

pwc read over a billion job ads across six continents and found the bottom of the ladder moved: ai-exposed entry-level roles are now seven times more likely to ask for judgement, leadership, and decision-making, skills that used to arrive in year five. the cost lands on you twice, because the cheap junior who used to absorb the rote work is now expected to show up with taste, and the rote work they were supposed to learn on has already been automated out from under them.

the advice going around is to pay up for ai skills, and the market is not wrong about the price, the ai wage premium hit 62 percent this year, up from 57 percent. paying more does not close the gap, because what you are actually buying is a person to exercise judgement your company has never made explicit, and no salary band compensates for that.

do the version that holds: take the three decisions your newest people get wrong most often, write the rule, the exception, and one worked example for each, and put them somewhere a person on day four can find without asking. then hire against the judgement you can train, instead of shopping for judgement you cannot describe.