“half of analyst seats gone in 5 years” misses what gets cut first. analyst work is two jobs: grunt work and judgment work. they’re paid the same but they aren’t worth the same. the grunt work — comp tables, model builds, deck formatting — was already being outsourced to India at $15/hour. AI just made it free and instant. the judgment work — reading a CFO in a room, knowing which assumption kills a deal, feeling when something’s wrong before the model says so — that’s not in the plugin list. the seats disappearing were already commodities. the ones that remain just got more leverage.