The Price of Experience

Every layoff saves money. They also eliminate the people who know how to keep the place running.

There was a time when experience was something employers competed to hire. Now it often seems to be something they compete to eliminate.

That’s a strange thing to write after spending a lifetime in broadcasting. I grew up believing experience mattered. You learned the craft. You made mistakes. You figured out how to handle breaking news, impossible deadlines, difficult personalities, impossible bosses, and equipment that decided to fail at exactly the wrong moment. Over time, those lessons became your value.

Lately, they seem to have become your salary.

Look around broadcasting.

Another round of layoffs at iHeartMedia. The dismantling of CBS News. The killing of CBS News Radio. Consolidation at Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery. Local television cutting staff. Newspapers disappearing. Radio stations run by fewer people than ever. Some now have no local staff at all—just syndicated programming with no one there to go on the air during an emergency.

The computers work fine—until they don't. The syndicated shows sound great—until an earthquake hits, a wildfire breaks out, or a chemical plant explodes. Then experience suddenly has value again. The problem is, by then you've already laid it off.

The announcements always sound the same. Companies talk about becoming faster. More efficient. Better positioned for the future.

But what they’re really cutting is experience and institutional memory. Knowledge earned doing the job, not handed out in a broadcasting classroom.

That isn’t unique to media.

Talk to software engineers who suddenly find themselves competing against AI coding tools. Copywriters. Customer service representatives. Lawyers. Even doctors are watching software begin to perform work that once required years of training.

For decades, companies invested in people because they believed knowledge accumulated over time. Someone with twenty years of experience wasn’t simply older. They were expected to make fewer mistakes, mentor younger employees, recognize problems sooner, and solve them faster.

Today, companies ask a different question.

Can we do it cheaper?

They always seem to be able to answer yes, even when the real answer is no.

One thing I used to hear around radio stations: “Is there anyone left to lay off?” The answer was always the same. “Trust me. They’ll always find somebody to cut. And a way to give bonuses to the C-suite.”

Automation really does eliminate repetitive work. AI really can speed up research. Modern tools really can make small teams more productive.

But what happens when you remove the people who know what “normal” looks like?

Ironically, companies often discover the value of experience only after it’s gone.

By then, there’s no one left to answer the questions. No one to train the replacements. No one to solve problems nobody had seen before. No one to figure out why the plan that looked so good in the boardroom isn’t working in the real world.

I’ve been thinking about this over the past year, not because I believe experienced people deserve jobs simply because they’ve been around a long time. We don’t. But dammit, you can’t build—or run—anything good without experience.

Monday morning on Archer & Feldman, Charles Feldman and I sit down with nationally syndicated broadcaster Mo’Kelly to talk about another wave of radio layoffs, what companies believe they’re gaining, what they’re risking, and where broadcasting goes from here.

Because the conversation isn’t really about radio anymore. It’s about the growing belief across American business that experience has become an expense instead of an investment.