Every career starts on a bottom rung, and this year the rung moved. The entry-level work that used to teach people a trade, the first drafts, the weekly reports, the boilerplate, is being absorbed by software, while the price of reaching the ladder at all keeps rising. Two people can earn the same degree and walk away holding very different bets, because only one of them can afford to lose. This issue follows the ladder from both ends: the student deciding what a degree is worth, and the department deciding what a junior hire is for. The answer in both cases is not to stop people from climbing. It is to tell them the truth about the ladder.