The End of the Career Ladder

What college grads should do right now; the independence era

I’ve been reading a lot of articles about the hiring crisis facing recent college graduates. With unemployment for new grads at 5.8%, the highest since October 2013. I can only imagine the uncertainty, frustration, and crippling debt.

Many are quick to blame AI for taking jobs, others are citing economic uncertainty and volatile markets. To me, the data points to a series of interrelated factors, but what I'm focused on is a bigger picture. This crisis offers us a glimpse into the future of work itself. Whatever is driving today’s college graduate hiring slowdown, the traditional career model—education—> internship—>job—> career ladder—is breaking. If it isn’t broken already.

We are heading toward what I’m calling the Independence Era. New grads are stuck because the old pathways aren't working, but we haven't yet figured out what to do instead. They’re still waiting for traditional hiring processes, applying for traditional entry-level roles, and expecting a pathway that is rapidly disappearing. Their struggle, and how they must adapt, previews what's coming for all of us. Career ladders will shrink, the shelf life of skills will continue to shorten, and the very idea of a “career” will evolve. Even if you don’t see yourself as an entrepreneur, you will soon have to think like one.

Why AI is Accelerating the Shift

Whatever is driving the college grad hiring slump, AI will accelerate that shift by creating more uncertainty. I see it firsthand with the companies I advise. Many are "waiting to see" how AI changes the roles they may need to hire for. While tech leaders have been sounding the alarms (or quieting them) on the job market, I believe the comments on junior roles will turn out to be true. AI can already do many of the tasks a junior hire would have been assigned: basic writing, data entry, analysis, marketing copy, even a first draft of a legal brief. As AI pilots continue to roll out, firms will get more clarity on which roles to cut, which to redesign, and which human skills to prioritize.

Companies will need fewer junior people who do the types of tasks traditionally assigned to them in the old model, and over time they will likely need fewer people overall (in traditional organizational structures). A company with 20 marketing people today may only need 10 in a few years. They will still need people who can make strong marketing judgment calls and set strategy, but the skills those marketing experts have today may not be what’s necessary in a few years. In other words, it may not be the same 10 people. And whatever tasks those future 10 people are doing—and the skills they'll need to complete them—will keep evolving in an AI-first era. So if you're currently sitting in a company today, expect your skill composition to change and your department to shrink or morph.

But if you are a college grad, how do you build any skills if you can’t get hired in the first place?

Cue the Independence Era

This is the start of the Independence Era in work. It's the beginning of entrepreneurs and independent workers becoming the dominant fabric of the workforce. Where “jobs” will become more of a patchwork of outsourcing your skills for several different projects. The idea of walking into a stable, salaried job right away is going to continue to fade. Why? Because AI will continue to change the skills companies need—perhaps every 12 to 24 months. The idea of a full-time, vertically-moving role will start to make less sense.

So my advice for the new college grads unfortunately stuck in the early days of this transition is to create your own apprenticeships.

Maybe you're interested in marketing. Instead of applying for a full-time role, you could:

• Offer to help a rising creator build their brand and convert followers into subscribers.

• Run a small ad campaign for a local café.

• Design an email flow for a nonprofit.

Or a mix mash of all of the above. All while mastering AI skills and learning how to become an AI-first marketer. You can use AI tools to run A/B tests, build a messaging-mix pipeline to generate variants, then pick winners and record your criteria. Think about the outcomes of your work over the specifics of the organization or project. If you grow that nonprofit’s visibility from twice a month to 10 times, that’s what counts.

Then, you could launch your own Substack community where you write about how AI is changing the marketing field and the decision-making landscape of marketing, showcasing what you are doing in real time. You’re building and signaling your skills and understanding of the AI landscape in your field. This is the entrepreneurial mindset. You don’t have to build a startup, but you do have to think like a business. What will start to matter less over time is that "first job title." What will matter more are the skills you have cultivated, your ability to direct AI, and a clear demonstration of adaptability, critical thinking, and judgment.

Building a Portfolio of Skills

It's not easy to think about work this way. We have spent the past century solidifying a workforce fabric centered around predictability, vertical career paths built on experience, increasing autonomy, and skills with a long shelf life. And now that chapter of the workforce is closing.

The numbers show this isn’t just theory. A new study from MBO Partners highlights a 6.5% increase in full-time independent workers since just last year, reaching 27.7 million. Granted, many of these independent workers are choosing that contractual relationship for various reasons. But soon, it could become the dominant structure.

The irony is, many of the larger “traditional” companies that exist today will be disrupted by AI themselves. It will likely be today’s entrepreneurs and independent workers who start to lay out new business models for the AI age. As you build up your skills and master the application of AI in various sectors, you could outcompete those who have spent the past few years "climbing" the career ladder. Work experience is becoming a less predictable indicator as the value and rate of obsolescence of skills continues to change.

The shape of the workforce could eventually become more stable as AI becomes more diffused and the creative destruction settles. It’s hard to say.

The Big Questions

The fast approaching Independence Era of work will have massive implications for how we think about security. In the United States, for instance, between 154 million and 178 million Americans rely on health insurance tied to their job as their main coverage. This is a predictable collision. Beyond that, stable and predictable income streams play a big role in family planning and asset-acquisition decisions. The uncertainty we already feel may grow. And as more people move into this independent model, we must be vigilant about the risk of exploitation and the dangers of algorithmic management, which we have already seen glimpses of in the current gig economy. I started writing about these changes five years ago.

But I think this change will morph into something else. Just as the fabric of the modern workforce would have seemed foreign to someone 200 years ago, the new model will come to be something different, too. Less about defined "jobs" and more about fluid "work" and the application of skills.

So it’s an important moment to ask ourselves: if the fabric of work is going to change, what ideas should we be putting forward? What do we want from it? What isn’t working right now? What do we want more or less of? Change is the default. But we can play a role in steering it.