The Diamond Model Issue
AI is reshaping the bottom of the org chart.
Nikki started her career in the marketing department of the Atlanta Braves. It was in the unglamorous execution work behind events that thousands of people showed up for without ever thinking about how they came together.
She will tell you that the job taught her more about how organizations actually function than anything that came after it. Not because the work was glamorous. Because it wasn’t. You learn how decisions are made by being close to the people who make them. You learn the distance between a plan and reality by living in the gap between them every day.
That’s what entry-level work was always for. Not cheap labor. Apprenticeship.
Now, many organizations are quietly redesigning their entry-level hiring because AI agents can now do the analytical work that first-year associates used to do. Bloomberg reported this month that the big consulting firms are reshaping what they need at the bottom of the pyramid. PwC has a name for the org structure emerging on the other side of this: the diamond. Small at the top, strong in the middle, narrow at the bottom.
Efficiency is the priority and certainly delivers immediate (short-term) financial results. We are afraid, though, that in the long term something important is missing.
The bottom of the pyramid was never about output. It was the layer where tacit knowledge moved from one generation of workers to the next. Where junior people sat in rooms they weren’t running yet and watched how things got done. Where they made small mistakes with small consequences and built the judgment that would eventually let them make big decisions.
You cannot automate your way to that. An AI agent can produce a first-year analyst’s deliverable. It cannot absorb what that analyst would have absorbed by being in the building.
PwC’s diamond model assumes the middle stays strong. But the middle was built by people who came up through the bottom. Ten years from now, organizations that eliminated their entry layer will be promoting people into senior roles who never had that critical entry-level experience.
That’s a leadership pipeline problem that will come to fruition across organizations. The risk is that leaders optimize for productivity and forget to optimize for growth. The diamond is a productivity structure. It is not a development structure.
So what does apprenticeship look like when the traditional entry layer is gone?
That’s the question organizations are going to have to figure out immediately. The ones that do will design it deliberately, treating early-career development as an intentional investment rather than an organic byproduct of having junior people around. Structured mentorship, judgment-building roles, deliberate knowledge transfer.
The ones that don’t will find out in five to seven years, when they go looking for the next generation of senior leaders and realize they don’t exist.
We know that the pyramid wasn’t perfect. But it’s an investment. The diamond model doesn’t consider that critical outcome that the people at the top got there by spending time at the bottom. And that time matters.
Links
AI Influences How McKinsey, BCG, Bain Hire for Entry-Level Consulting Jobs | Bloomberg The big consulting firms are quietly reshaping entry-level hiring as AI agents take on the analytical work first-year associates used to do.
No More Pyramids: Rethinking Your Workforce for the Agentic AI Era | PwC PwC makes the case for a diamond-shaped workforce and surfaces the question of what happens to the development layer that used to live at the bottom.
What Leadership Looks Like in an Agentic AI World | HBS Working Knowledge As AI agents take on more autonomous work, the human leadership skills that matter are shifting, and the gap between organizations preparing for that and those that aren’t is growing.
Focus on AI for Growth, Not Just Productivity | HR Executive IBM’s CHRO on why optimizing for productivity alone is the wrong AI frame, and what the growth-oriented alternative actually requires.
How AI Is Changing the Nature of Entry-Level Work | World Economic Forum Entry-level postings in the US are down 35% in 18 months, and that number understates what’s actually being lost.
AI is Transforming Work and Talent Strategy Must Keep Up | Fortune The organizations winning on AI talent aren’t just hiring for current skills — they’re redesigning how they build the leaders they’ll need in five years.
The Megamanager Era: 12 Direct Reports Is the New Average | Fortune If the middle is where the diamond’s strength is supposed to live, the megamanager trend raises a sharp follow-on question: how strong can that layer actually be?