What happens when AI takes over entry-level IT tasks?

That shift signals something important. If technology is accelerating, skill development has to accelerate with it. However, for IT professionals in particular, this can cause a bit of a dilemma. If AI replaces the repetitive, entry-level tasks that used to build foundational skills, where are those skills supposed to come from?

What happens if AI takes over entry-level?

In a recent conversation on the Spiceworks Community, we explored what happens to career growth when AI starts absorbing the repetitive tasks entry-level professionals used to rely on?

For decades, the IT career path has started the same: work at the help desk, learn the basics, and troubleshoot the simple stuff. Was it glamorous? No, but it built the foundation that you would grow your career on.

AI has changed all that as it takes over many of the repetitive tasks that entry-level professionals used to do. If AI handles the repetition, where do those foundational reps come from?

AI’s impact on career development

Repetition is how professionals internalize systems. It’s how they begin to understand how infrastructure behaves under normal conditions, which makes problems easier to spot later. When a junior engineer works through the same type of issue multiple times, they’re building a model of how things work. Instead of struggling through the problem, early-career professionals may jump straight to the solution the tool suggests, hindering their growth.

Over time, this could create a subtle shift in career growth. Professionals may advance in title and responsibility without having accumulated the same depth of hands-on exposure that previous generations did.

The modern day career advancement

If repetitive entry-level work becomes obsolete, the traditional IT career ladder starts to look different. At some point, someone still needs to reason through a problem the AI didn’t anticipate. Someone needs to recognize when a recommendation doesn’t quite make sense. Someone needs to understand why a system behaves the way it does, not just that it does.

This is where PwC’s embedded learning approach becomes relevant. If AI is woven into daily workflows, development has to be woven in as well. With AI handling the “grunt” work, we can no longer solely rely on experience to help us grow our skills, it needs to be done intentionally. For IT, this might look like more career rotation programs where junior employees get to work closely with a mentor on more advanced projects. Or it could be as simple as requiring junior employees to explain AI recommendations before implementing them.

The entry-level must evolve

AI is going to continue to get smarter and the boring, repetitive tasks will continue to get automated. However, it’s important that entry-level roles evolve alongside AI rather than get replaced entirely. If the old model was “learn by doing the same thing 100 times,” and AI now does that thing for us, we have to ask: what replaces those 100 reps?

It’s crucial that junior employees still understand the “why” and “how” between what AI is spitting out. Eventually, AI will provide an incorrect solution or not work properly, which will require the human managing it to have the knowledge to make sound judgement.

How is your organization handling upskilling alongside AI? How do you think entry-level roles will evolve? Join the conversation on the Spiceworks Community.