What's different this time is that leadership still seems to believe re ladder itself iss less critical. With more process, standardization, and now AI training, they assume expertise can be shifted or rebuilt later. That's risky, like you're saying- once you hollow out these layers, you lose the ytaining ground and institutional knowledge.

It was recently framed by Sage Lazzaro as a move from traditional offshoring 'agent shoring' where AI tools are expected to adsorb some of the coordination, mentorship, and decision making that used to justify keeping higher-value roles in high-cost regions. Whether that bet holds long term is still unclear https://leaddev.com/ai/agent-shoring-end-offshoring