Company Bans New Hires From AI Until They Learn Their Jobs
Valon uses AI aggressively. New non-engineering hires now have to learn enough of the job to know when it is wrong before they get access.
Valon, an AI-focused mortgage software company, says it has temporarily turned off AI access for every new non-engineering hire. Access returns when a manager can attest that the employee understands the work well enough to question the model and verify what it produces.
The company says experienced employees can now complete in minutes work that once took hours or days. That created a training problem: the tedious handoffs and difficult edge cases where new employees used to learn the business were disappearing, while AI could give them an answer that looked finished before they had enough context to find what was wrong with it.
So the AI-native company has arrived at an unexpectedly traditional onboarding plan: first learn the job, then use the machine that makes the job faster. The restriction is described as crude and temporary. The manager attestation is the permanent-looking part.