Last month, I had the opportunity to judge the 2026 VCU Capstone Design Expo and later lead the VCU Computer Science Industry Advisory Board meeting.

As a VCU CS alum and the current President of the board, conversations about curriculum, emerging technologies, and workforce readiness are familiar territory for me. What feels entirely different now, however, is the sharp sense of urgency surrounding entry-level roles, and the looming question of whether AI is rendering them obsolete.

Across the industry, the anxiety is palpable. We see it in shifting CS enrollment numbers, the hurdles recent graduates face in landing their first career-track roles, and a relentless cycle of headlines declaring the “death of the junior engineer.”

I find myself returning to two fundamental questions each year:

• What does it mean to be a computer scientist?
• What roles are we actually preparing students for? What value do we believe these graduates will offer in the world where they will launch their careers? Given the rising cost of tuition, these are existential questions for higher education. Universities must clearly articulate their ROI: What do students earn with a four-year degree that a handful of courses, a boot camp, or a few certifications cannot provide? What becomes possible through that deeper layer of preparation?

Haven’t We Been Here Before?

History is filled with examples of roles disrupted by emerging technologies. When these shifts happen, what actually happens to the people who held those roles? Did the position disappear entirely, or did it pivot and evolve? Did the core value change, or did we just upgrade the tools?

These are vital conversations to have today, in a world where literally everyone carries a pocket-sized computer capable of generating technical assets faster than ever. While technology may disrupt faster than a university curriculum can evolve, we should remember that innovation can both disrupt jobs and create entirely new categories of work.

Alarm clocks put knocker-uppers out of business.

The Buckingham Post (Apr 1, 1960)

The Buckingham Post (Apr 1, 1960)

Consider the “knocker-uppers” of the industrial era. Before affordable mechanical alarm clocks existed, factory hands, shift workers, and dockworkers hired human alarms to tap on their windows with long poles to ensure they woke up on time.

Eventually, the alarm clock killed the knocker-upper industry.

Although alarm clocks were invented in the late 1700s, they were not initially cheap or reliable. The knocker-ups were not hired to tap on windows with a stick; they were hired to ensure that their client was awake. The best practitioners adapted. A knocker-up named Mary Smith famously traded her heavy pole for a pea shooter to protect windows and avoid waking up the entire neighborhood. Many in the trade refused to leave a window until their client physically looked out to prove they were awake.

The tools were never the job.

In one context, the thought of a human alarm clock sounds archaic in a world where nearly every device has a clock and an alarm. In another context, a human alarm clock sounds like a luxury only the 1% can afford. Imagine never having to remember to set an alarm because your alarm person will see to it that you’re up and ready for your day.

Making the Shift from Doing To Thinking

Junior-level technology roles are described as going the way of the knocker-uppers. Leaders who believe that these roles are dead are forgetting that everyone must start somewhere. The skills and duties are certainly transforming, and I would argue that this applies to roles at every level. The reality is that entry-level roles are required to ensure that the future pipeline of senior leaders is sufficient.

Instead of celebrating the death of “entry-level tech jobs,” we should spend more time discussing how to redefine these roles to meet the moment. In terms of workforce preparation, that means shifting from training doers to developing thinkers who can build and adopt new tools and discern when to use them and when not to.

If by “entry tech jobs” we are referring to roles that require humans to write lines of code, then yes, you may need fewer humans to “write code.” And there is a lot more to delivering and maintaining technology solutions than that. As companies settle into the realities of how AI tools shift workforce needs, operating costs, and accountability systems, the role of entry-level positions and their expectations will become clearer.

However, entry is still required to build our pipeline of future leaders, unless your vision for the future is that we’ll be led by bots. My question to fellow industry leaders is simple: What vision of the future are you preparing your workforce for?