The Career Ladder is Gone
Now We Need a Grappling Hook
We are entering a profound shift in the labor market. As AI automates the “busy work” and entry-level tasks that once defined the start of a professional life, the first rung of the career ladder has effectively been removed.
This creates a brutal “Catch-22” for graduates: Companies are increasingly reluctant to hire people without experience, but because those entry-level roles are now being handled by AI, there are fewer places to gain that experience. The drawbridge between graduation and employment isn’t just widening - it’s gone.
The End of the “Paid-to-Learn” Era
The truth is, the bar for entry has been raised. In the past, companies were willing to pay to train you. Today, the shift from the market is clear: We won’t pay you to learn; you must learn to be paid.
Education must now be a blend of theory and practice. An academic degree without applicable skills is incomplete. The transition between school and work is no longer a hand-off; it’s a gradual merger.
You cannot wait for graduation to begin your career; you must start “doing” while you are still “studying.”
For a student, this means starting early. Experimenting with tools and focusing on a specific niche is more essential than ever. If you aren’t using leverage in a leveraged world, you are being outcompeted by those who are.
Agency: Becoming Entrepreneurial & The Best
When the career ladder has been taken away, it means that you now need to take that into your own hands by building your own grappling hook. One that you can control, and you can direct wherever you want.
As AI becomes the “commodity” labor, the most valuable skills shift from doing to direction. It is essential to stop thinking like an employee waiting for a career path and start thinking like an owner, creator, and producer.
The competition is no longer other people, but it’s increasingly AI.
The more AI develops, the less valuable labor becomes. The ability to now use these tools means that average is now effectively invisible Excellence becomes a necessity.
That means that very very specific skills that nobody else can do becomes irreplacable. It’s actually relatively easy to become the best at the world at something if you narrow your focus enough. You can then widen it later.
That’s what I did when I stared my career by becoming the best in the world at recruitment of law students to China, partly because nobody else was doing it - so I had no competition. Super niche, and then I expanded outwards from that niche.
Build a Grappling Hook, Not a Resume
The grappling hook is also your “Proof of Work” - tangible evidence that you can provide value before you even have a job title.
A grappling hook isn’t a list of classes you took; it’s what you’ve actually built:
Proof of Work: A public portfolio, a specialized GitHub repository, or a niche newsletter.
AI Mastery: Being the person who knows how to prompt a specific AI tool for a specific industry better than the senior managers.
Strategic Contribution: Solving a real problem for a company you admire and sending them the solution before they even post a job opening.
Building in Public: Documenting your learning process on LinkedIn or a blog to show your trajectory, consistency, and professional taste.
Mastering the Four Pillars of Leverage
In the digital economy, the more AI develops, the less valuable labor becomes.
To bridge the experience gap, graduates must lean into leverage. Leverage allows a small amount of human effort to produce exponential results. Rather than just selling your time for a wage, you must learn to utilize the one or more of the four primary types of leverage:
Code: Using software or “no-code” tools to perform the work of a thousand people.
Content: Producing media (videos, blogs, podcasts) that can reach a global audience 24/7 without extra effort.
Capital: Directing financial resources to scale an idea or solve a problem.
People: Coordinating teams and building networks to multiply your output.
Key Insight: If you aren’t using leverage in a leveraged world, you are being outcompeted by those who are. The goal is to move from “low-leverage loops” (like data entry) into high-leverage roles that require human empathy, judgment, and alignment.
I have written more about how to build a successful career here
How to build a successful career in the AI age?
TLDR: The labour market has changed. Students need to take education into their own hands. Here is a curriculum and way of thinking about which skills to build that can withstand the evolving job market. There are two tracks: 1) Leverage, and 2) Human Super-Skills. The curriculum should be tailored to each person.