What happens when junior design jobs disappear? (www.itsnicethat.com)

Entry-level design roles are evaporating as automation, tighter budgets and remote workflows replace the traditional apprenticeship ladder with unpaid gigs, cold outreach and portfolio hustling. Routine junior tasks—retouching, cropping, producing banner variants and other pattern-driven production—are now accomplished with a single prompt, and students are already powering workflows with multiple AI subscriptions to avoid rate limits. That speed helps shipping and prototyping, but it also strips out the low-stakes repetition, in-person critique and mentorship that build creative muscle and “belief capital” (the senior advocate who spots and cultivates potential). The result: an uneven, connection-driven pipeline where only the audacious or privileged reliably break in, and unpaid labor and the “audacity tax” entrench inequity. For the AI/ML community this is both a case study and a warning. It shows AI models rapidly absorbing predictable, high-volume creative work while exposing limits—models tend to average outcomes and can’t easily replicate taste-making, mentorship, or the lived experience that fuels originality. Technical implications include shifting training needs (tools must support learning, feedback and collaboration), UX design for teachable co-pilots, and ethical concerns about labor displacement and access. The emergent fixes are informal: peer collectives, self-directed projects and hybrid human-AI workflows; but durable solutions will require designing AI systems and workplace structures that preserve learning pathways, mentorship and opportunities for originality.