Goldman Sachs Group executive Kevin Sneader said new entrants to the financial industry no longer need to wait years before becoming managers, as they are responsible for overseeing AI agents from their very first day on the job, raising a question: where will today's middle managers fit in?

"When young people start work now, what they're managing is AI agents," Sneader, who heads Goldman Sachs' business in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, said Thursday at the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore. "They have to make full use of this virtual army they now have." He added that previous generations often had to work for several years before managing others, and that reallocating these managers will be a "generational challenge across many fields."

Sneader's remarks shed light on how AI may disrupt the traditional banking career ladder. In conventional banking, junior employees spend years on analysis and preparation work before they can be promoted into management roles. During a panel discussion on AI and finance, Sneader and others did not dwell on fears that the technology would cause mass layoffs, but instead focused on how artificial intelligence will reshape employee roles.

However, as AI changes the types of positions available in the future, many jobs across the financial industry are expected to be disrupted. Goldman Sachs President John Waldron previously said, "I often describe Goldman Sachs as a 'human assembly line.'"

"This management task is no longer carried out by middle managers, but by frontline employees," Sneader said at the conference. "We don't yet know exactly how this group will evolve in the future." Sandra Peterson, an operating partner at investment firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, said the traditional career ladder may cease to exist.

"In the past, professional services firms were like pyramids," she said. "You came in, and you had to climb step by step, and if you could stick with it, you'd move up to the next level, and the next level, and the next level." She also said that as artificial intelligence takes on most of the tedious work, it remains unclear whether companies will still need as many entry-level positions.

Singapore's financial regulator has observed the same shift. Chia Der Jiun, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said at the same panel discussion that operations staff need to transform into managers and supervisors of AI agents. He said banks will also have less demand for fresh graduates doing analysis and preparation work.