Diagnosing a broken technical system pays less today than it did in 2022. Advising the client on how to prevent the next one pays more. The job description covering both tasks hasn’t changed since AI disrupted IT roles.
The problem is compensation systems still price jobs and levels. AI prices tasks. The thing being priced is changing faster than the system built to price it. Most companies have no process to notice when the two don’t align.
Job architecture runs on the assumption that a title predicts the work inside it. That assumption is breaking.
How 7,000 Workers Upended Our Understanding of Job Architecture
ADP Research and Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab tracked about 7,000 IT workers from 2019 to 2025 using real payroll data. The researchers looked at 5 million job postings and 9 million payroll records across more than 600 employers. They then mapped the work into 25 standard task categories and ran the wage data against each one. They attempted to control for age, gender and company size to find which specific tasks earned a premium and which didn’t.
Continue Reading: 6 Years of Payroll Data Show AI Is Already Breaking Job Architecture