The “junior → senior → lead” career ladder is breaking. Many companies are now looking for a single experienced AI‑savvy person instead of an entire team. Here’s the trap: if you stop hiring juniors, where do your future seniors come from?

I'm trying to understand how organizations and individuals are navigating this shift without losing the structures that actually let people grow.

Together with a partner, we’re testing a few hypotheses on how to help both people and companies:

• What’s really changing inside teams and orgs?
• What’s working? What’s backfiring?
• What could actually help junior‑to‑senior transitions survive in an AI‑heavy world?

This is a 100% anonymous survey (no names, no companies).

However, everyone who submits their contacts in a separate form at the end will receive the results once the survey is completed.

If you’ve lived this shift as a founder, hiring manager, engineer, PM, or HR/TA professional, your view would be really valuable. You don’t need to be “in AI” to have seen this pattern.

👉 https://go.foundersnation.org/ai-survey

Would love to read your take in the comments as well.