Andrew Runnette at Biz Ops Studio lays out a structural shift: companies are quietly dropping entry-level hires (junior dev postings down 53% per Indeed, per research from Erik Brynjolfsson's lab at Stanford) while ramping up spending on fractional executives, now a $5.7B market growing 14% annually according to Vendux.

The new org shape is a small core team (see HI-C's), with AI agents handling junior work, and senior fractional leaders or forward-deployed engineers brought in for specific needs.

The practical warning: if the entry-level pipeline dries up, there won't be enough experienced senior talent to fill fractional roles in a decade, so companies and operators should start deliberately designing for this new shape now instead of defaulting to old hiring patterns.