Transcript

You know why young people can't find jobs right now? Everyone says it's AI, but I'm not so sure. There's new evidence that is report in the Wall Street Journal that points to something else entirely, which is remote work. So here's the story. There are researchers at London School Economics who analyze more than 400 million job postings across several countries. Entry level hiring has dropped over 14% since 2019. Here's the thing. The companies that stayed remote after the pandemic were the ones most likely to cut junior hiring. So why? So think about what it entry level higher actually is for. From a company's perspective, it's a bet. The company loses money on you at first, betting that you'll learn enough to become valuable. And so how do junior people learn? Normally, they shadow someone. They overhear how a senior colleague handles a tense call. They learn over lunch. They network, you know, sort of like they soak it all in. But you can't do that over slack or Sort of these asynchronous means of communication. In the Wall Street Journal article, one founder put it perfectly. Said that “training junior workers remotely becomes a silent tax on senior time. So companies quietly stopped paying for it. They hire experienced people instead. In the bottom rung of the ladder just sort of disappears.” The lowest level, the entry level hires. And how about the young people who are living through this? In the article, one 24 year old described her fully Remote job this way. She said, “you give me a task, I give you an output.” Days without hearing a co worker's voice. She said remote work has basically ruined her social life. Another young worker said, laid off twice in three years. Said something to the effect of “I think it's easier to let someone go if you don't have a physical relationship, you know, like that you've never actually seen them or anyone see them on a day to day basis,” which to me, makes a lot of sense. Now, to be fair, there are some people, young people, who love remote working for good reason. Flexibility is real. You can skip that commute, and so on. There are some reasons, But Here's what worries me that researchers warn, and I agree, that this sort of hollows out the pipeline of future experienced workers. So every junior person that we don't train today is a senior person who doesn't exist, essentially in 10 years. So if you're early in your career, here's my honest advice. Optimize for learning, not comfort. If you have a choice, take the job where you can actually watch skilled people work up close, in person. You can have that convenience later. Right now, to me, I think you need proximity.