The Bottom Rung of the ERP Talent ladder is Disappearing….Now What?
Two days ago I posted about AI absorbing the routine work in both NetSuite and Dynamics 365.
Since then, one question keeps nagging at me, and I haven’t seen anyone in this ecosystem ask it out loud yet.
If AI takes over the routine work, where does the next generation of senior consultants actually come from?
Think about how every great ERP architect you know got to where they are. It wasn’t a certification. It was years of doing the work nobody else wanted to do. Building saved searches. Writing test scripts. Reconciling data at 2am during a cutover. Sitting through the UAT sessions everyone else found a reason to skip.
That is where they learned how these systems actually behave, not how the documentation says they behave.
And that is exactly the work SuiteAgents and Copilot agents are starting to take on right now.
So here is the honest question for every partner and every internal IT leader: if the bottom rung of the ladder is gone, how does anyone climb?
Microsoft’s own 2026 Work Trend Index has an interesting answer buried in it. Nearly half of Copilot conversations now involve the kind of work that used to be reserved for senior people. And the most effective AI users do something that honestly surprised me: 43% of them deliberately do some of their work WITHOUT AI, just to keep their skills sharp.
Here is what I think this means for hiring in this ecosystem.
The firms that stop hiring junior talent because “AI does that work now” are creating a problem for themselves that won’t show up for another five or six years.
But when it does show up, it will show up all at once. Today’s senior architects start retiring, and suddenly everyone is fighting over a mid-level bench that was never built.
The smart firms I talk to are doing something different. They are still hiring juniors, but year one looks nothing like it used to.
Less time on busywork, more time in design conversations, more time in front of clients, and a lot of time reviewing what the AI produced and learning why it is right or wrong.
Junior talent is not obsolete. The old way of developing it is.
Since then, one question keeps nagging at me, and I haven’t seen anyone in this ecosystem ask it out loud yet.
If AI takes over the routine work, where does the next generation of senior consultants actually come from?
Think about how every great ERP architect you know got to where they are. It wasn’t a certification. It was years of doing the work nobody else wanted to do. Building saved searches. Writing test scripts. Reconciling data at 2am during a cutover. Sitting through the UAT sessions everyone else found a reason to skip.
That is where they learned how these systems actually behave, not how the documentation says they behave.
And that is exactly the work SuiteAgents and Copilot agents are starting to take on right now.
So here is the honest question for every partner and every internal IT leader: if the bottom rung of the ladder is gone, how does anyone climb?
Microsoft’s own 2026 Work Trend Index has an interesting answer buried in it. Nearly half of Copilot conversations now involve the kind of work that used to be reserved for senior people. And the most effective AI users do something that honestly surprised me: 43% of them deliberately do some of their work WITHOUT AI, just to keep their skills sharp.
Here is what I think this means for hiring in this ecosystem.
The firms that stop hiring junior talent because “AI does that work now” are creating a problem for themselves that won’t show up for another five or six years.
But when it does show up, it will show up all at once. Today’s senior architects start retiring, and suddenly everyone is fighting over a mid-level bench that was never built.
The smart firms I talk to are doing something different. They are still hiring juniors, but year one looks nothing like it used to.
Less time on busywork, more time in design conversations, more time in front of clients, and a lot of time reviewing what the AI produced and learning why it is right or wrong.
Junior talent is not obsolete. The old way of developing it is.
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