Goldman Sachs expects new employees to manage AI agents from day one

Investment banking has traditionally followed a simple rule: new hires do the supporting work, and management comes years later. Goldman Sachs plans to change that, though a newcomer's first team will consist of software. "When our young people start now, they manage agents," Kevin Sneader said Thursday at the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore, according to Bloomberg. New hires would need to get the most out of the "virtual army" now at their disposal.

Sneader is not a technology executive trying to sell a product. He heads Goldman's Asia-Pacific business excluding Japan, sits on the bank's Management Committee and was McKinsey's global managing partner before joining Goldman in 2021, according to his profile on the bank's website. When someone in that position describes a new management structure for a major bank, it carries more weight than a catchy line at a conference.

What happens to middle management?

Bloomberg raises the obvious follow-up question: if even new hires are managing teams, what happens to the middle managers who previously handled that responsibility? The quotes available so far do not reveal whether Sneader addressed it. His remarks come in a year when the tech industry cut more than 124,000 jobs in the first seven months alone, and Snap cited AI efficiency gains as the reason for eliminating 1,000 positions. Yet the economics do not always work out. Some companies are scaling back their use of AI because tokens are becoming more expensive than employees.

Who will still learn the trade?

What Sneader's vision leaves out is how new hires will learn. Junior bankers have traditionally learned the business by building models, writing presentations and checking figures, precisely the tasks agents are expected to take over. Those who start out reviewing an agent's work still need to recognize when it gets something wrong. That judgment usually develops through years of working with spreadsheets.

For Goldman, the virtual army may boost productivity. But the announcement does not answer whether it will produce experienced bankers in ten years or simply very young managers with no experience. Every industry hiring entry-level employees needs to consider that question, not just Wall Street.