Senior Skills, Day One - Has AI re-specced the career ladder?

Experienced developers in METR's randomised trial felt 20% faster with AI and measured 19% slower — a 39-percentage-point gap between feel and fact. Dale Leszczynski and Nick McIntosh take that perception problem into the graduate employment data: Stanford's Canaries in the Coal Mine payroll research, PwC's 2026 AI Jobs Barometer and its "seniorised" entry-level roles, DEWR's first AI and employment report, the 2025 Graduate Outcomes Survey showing underemployment rising a third straight year, and Anthropic's Economic Index putting Australia first for per-capita AI use. Then the fix: supervised unaided practice and a defended technical review — the verification skills no computing degree examines.

[00:00] — Experts misjudge AI speedup
[02:41] — Two job datasets collide
[05:24] — Job ads versus actual hires
[06:47] — Australia's first AI employment report
[09:44] — Computing graduate employment falls
[10:39] — Australia tops AI usage index
[12:40] — Graduate outcomes: the before photo
[14:43] — Frontier models ship, checking lags
[20:22] — Two fixes universities already own
[24:45] — Hosts put numbers on tape

Link promised on air: Stanford/ADP Canaries Dashboard — https://canaries.stanford.edu

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