Freezing junior hiring looks like a clean saving on the spreadsheet. It quietly bills you back over the next three years, and AI makes the trap deeper than it looks.
You are looking at the headcount budget.
There is a line for a junior hire, and next to it a number, and that number is the easiest one on the whole sheet to delete.
Your junior is not shipping the hard thing yet.
Seniors keep answering their questions.
And now an AI writes the boilerplate the junior used to write.
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