I would strongly encourage including RTO mandates in this discussion, that aligns almost perfectly with the data presented. I can also tell you from first-hand experience at a top-10 accounting firm (BDO USA), that the training & on-the-job support I received as an intern in Spring 2020 was significantly better than when I returned as a full-time associate in Summer 2021! In only a year the firm had drastically reduced headcount through offshoring and refusal to hire during years of record income, whilst also refusing to promote or provide meaningful raises. The remaining experienced associates, seniors, and managers were all far too busy with the increased workload to train anyone, including the new interns that fell under me for training since I had "done the job before" a year and a half prior... with a massive interruption in the normal intern experience due to COVID shutdowns. The issue is not AI or work from home (which I have been doing in some capacity since 2013), but firms refusing to invest in proper training, career advancement, or incentives to keep junior employees. It's simply poorly chasing attempts at cost-cutting wherever they could find it except where the costs can be shaved in a valuable way (remote/hybrid work), that's what the correlation is.
Try working 12-16 hours in an open office for months on end. You don't learn through osmosis, you grow to resent your peers, seniors & managers get visibly annoyed if you ask any questions even after openly stating "ask anything, no dumb questions," office doors stay shut, it's all built to set up a hierarchy to put and keep people in their place through acts and displays of power. If you can't afford to look the part, you don't get accepted or promoted. Remote work removed too many of those limitations for firms to accept, you could live in Nebraska but work at a prestigious Manhattan firm, the freedom of choice and affordability wasn't strictly tied to title or location, and opened up an enormous value in contingency planning. It's why the Feds have had remote work since the 1980s, wider adoption through the 90s, and by the Bush's second term it was available in some form to all agencies with in-office only phaseouts already underway.
Excellent piece. I too find I am optimistic about young people and AI -- at least in terms of language and culture, youth will always be "ahead" of AI, which will always lag.
If junior learns to use AI native, then they would actually be faster then seniors who refused to use it
I would strongly encourage including RTO mandates in this discussion, that aligns almost perfectly with the data presented. I can also tell you from first-hand experience at a top-10 accounting firm (BDO USA), that the training & on-the-job support I received as an intern in Spring 2020 was significantly better than when I returned as a full-time associate in Summer 2021! In only a year the firm had drastically reduced headcount through offshoring and refusal to hire during years of record income, whilst also refusing to promote or provide meaningful raises. The remaining experienced associates, seniors, and managers were all far too busy with the increased workload to train anyone, including the new interns that fell under me for training since I had "done the job before" a year and a half prior... with a massive interruption in the normal intern experience due to COVID shutdowns. The issue is not AI or work from home (which I have been doing in some capacity since 2013), but firms refusing to invest in proper training, career advancement, or incentives to keep junior employees. It's simply poorly chasing attempts at cost-cutting wherever they could find it except where the costs can be shaved in a valuable way (remote/hybrid work), that's what the correlation is.
Try working 12-16 hours in an open office for months on end. You don't learn through osmosis, you grow to resent your peers, seniors & managers get visibly annoyed if you ask any questions even after openly stating "ask anything, no dumb questions," office doors stay shut, it's all built to set up a hierarchy to put and keep people in their place through acts and displays of power. If you can't afford to look the part, you don't get accepted or promoted. Remote work removed too many of those limitations for firms to accept, you could live in Nebraska but work at a prestigious Manhattan firm, the freedom of choice and affordability wasn't strictly tied to title or location, and opened up an enormous value in contingency planning. It's why the Feds have had remote work since the 1980s, wider adoption through the 90s, and by the Bush's second term it was available in some form to all agencies with in-office only phaseouts already underway.
Excellent piece. I too find I am optimistic about young people and AI -- at least in terms of language and culture, youth will always be "ahead" of AI, which will always lag.