Why is company knowledge the less durable advantage?#
Because company knowledge is context, and context can be written down. Once the reasons behind a system are captured in a form agents can use (see context engineering), machines depend far less on the person who held them.
What happens to field expertise?#
Field expertise is likely to give way to expertise in directing machines, as the cobbler's craft gave way to factory production. The harder problem is apprenticeship: the routine work delegated first is how junior developers used to build judgment. Stanford payroll research puts employment of 22- to 25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs about 19% below the trend for less-exposed peers (August 2026), a pattern its authors do not attribute to AI.
The strongest engineers will pair earlier experience with skill at directing machines, because knowing what good looks like is what makes asking for it worth anything. See how AI is rewriting the engineering job description.