Lawyers or real engineers can only push a button and still have secure jobs because they have licenses/certifications/boards and liabilities with consequences. There is no such thing in programming. (Even though our mistakes can and do also lead to real people dying)

> it feels like a long time since I did more than convert someone else's Figma (or Adobe XD, or Photoshop document) into code, and glue it to a pre-existing API

That looks like webdev, that's like a minuscule part of all programming in question.

> automated away a decade ago, without LLMs.

I think LLMs is the worst part of it because literally what programmers do is used against them. It's like taxi drivers used to train self driving cabs to automate themselves out of jobs, except imagine self driving cars actually worked and there are no unions or protective gov regulation and taxi drivers all cheer for this because each thinks the whole firing and pay reduction is only for someone else not themselves:)