AI and the workplace: Is the high-tech sector being dangerously short-sighted?
CTech's "HR: The Next Leap" survey polled 31 Israeli offices across the high-tech sector to uncover the most definitive trends affecting Startup Nation in recent times. As we continue to dive deeper into these findings, we turn our focus to what is happening inside the office: the AI workplace transformation.
"If the industry lets the apprenticeship model break, we starve our own senior pipeline five years out," warned Dana Matalon Goren, VP HR at Zero Networks. "Designing a deliberate on-ramp for early-career talent – pairing them with AI rather than pitting them against it – is one of the defining HR challenges of this moment, not a nice-to-have."
What are the honest side effects of the AI revolution in Startup Nation? There is much positive, like the obvious productivity augmentations. However, thanks to CTech's latest industry survey, we can come to better understand how AI is transforming the workplace for both the good and the troubling. Still in its early revolution, our respondents noted how AI has triggered everything from mass reskilling and role merging to the collapse of dedicated technical positions and the dissolution of the entry-level rungs previous generations climbed to establish themselves.
The latest iteration of our “HR In” series, HR: The Next Leap, conducted between May and June 2026, surveyed a new round of executives whose roles are more demanding and vital than ever. From active and looming war threats to AI rapidly and constantly redefining what it means to be productive, running a company in Startup Nation presents its own unique set of challenges and rewards. Israel's people professionals have been tasked with future-proofing their workforce while simultaneously ensuring business continuity and employee wellbeing during relentlessly unprecedented times.
HR: The Next Leap gives us a glimpse into the heart of the local tech ecosystem through the HR professionals actively shaping its culture. Through their responses, we gauged the most salient macro and micro trends defining the modern workplace in Israel. Delving further into these findings, we focus here on what is happening inside the office as AI continues to transform the workplace.
AI is creating a "broken rung" on the career ladder for juniors
While most respondents rejected the notion of AI as a catalyst for mass layoffs, many vocalized the concern of AI consuming entry-level tasks that once served as the training layer for junior employees, creating an "experience paradox."
Companies naturally need a steady influx of junior hires to sustain their talent pipelines, not to mention the introduction of fresh thinking that keeps a company agile and prevents stagnation. However, AI is now removing the tasks the entry-level professionals would once use to learn the ropes of the industry.
This concern was expressed by 35% of respondents (11 out of 31 companies), which emphasized that AI is altering early-career hiring. With automation rendering traditional junior tasks redundant, companies are now forced to expect "AI fluency" from day one, creating a tremendous barrier to entry in the sector. Many HR executives warned that if companies don't develop new entry points, the industry will essentially eat its own seed corn, depriving itself of future senior talent.
Matalon Goren views this as one of the most significant concerns in tech recruitment today. "The more interesting story for us isn’t roles eliminated, it’s the 'broken rung' at the bottom of the ladder," she explained.
"AI hasn’t so much erased jobs as it has consumed the entry-level tasks that were always the apprenticeship layer of our profession. The work a junior used to cut their teeth on is now the work AI does fastest, which quietly raises the floor for entry and explains why we haven’t opened junior recruitment."
Similarly, Moran Shoham Weiser, SVP Global HR at AppsFlyer, expressed the duty of the sector to rethink its approach to junior hiring for the AI era. "The greatest challenge is at the entry level," Weiser said. "Many traditional junior tasks are now partially automated, which means organizations need to rethink how early-career talent develops skills and gains experience. As employers, we have a responsibility to create new pathways that allow emerging talent to build expertise in an AI-enabled workplace."
AI is erasing roles like QA but creating "jokers"
Another unprecedented result of AI is the disappearance of staple, specific tech positions. Most notably, per the survey results, as AI agents become capable of handling manual grunt work, the dedicated Quality Assurance (QA) role is being increasingly absorbed into the larger developer function.
As Aviv Yonas, VP of HR at Team8 noted: "As of now, we are still not seeing a clear elimination of existing roles. However, there is a drop in demand for a role that has been declining in recent years anyway: QA.”
“Over the past few years, it has largely merged with the developer role, and it has become rare to recruit a dedicated QA position. Most of that work is now covered by AI agents managed by developers."
According to Yonas, the most highly valued high-tech employees are now multi-disciplinary generalists. These are the versatile and adaptable professionals who can wield AI in such a way to punch well above their weight across a variety of disciplines.
"These are candidates who have been smart enough to embrace the AI revolution and turn it into a real competitive edge," she said. "They are the ‘jokers’ in the deck – people who can manage and orchestrate multiple AI agents, adapt quickly, and contribute meaningfully across a wide range of domains within the company"
Still, as Gye Cohen, Director of Operations at YL Ventures, expressed, “while modern AI coding agents are highly sophisticated, writing code is only one piece of the puzzle.”
“The true bottleneck in cybersecurity is the ability to architect and build complex, large-scale enterprise-grade systems,” Cohen continued. “That core architectural expertise, combined with the unique engineering mindset developed within the local cybersecurity ecosystem, is incredibly difficult to duplicate."
For Cohen, as with the majority of respondents, the real value of AI is its ability to amplify existing talent.
"Instead, AI acts as a powerful force multiplier, helping founders build leaner, more agile teams with lower operational risk," she added. "The reskilling story in our portfolio is less about survival and more about velocity. The engineers thriving are the ones who made AI part of their daily workflow, and as a result are moving faster than ever before."
