"AI" is the latest iteration of snake oil that is foisted upon us by management. The problem is not "AI" per se, but the amount of of friction and productivity loss that comes with it.
Most of the productivity loss comes from being forced to engage with it and push back against that nonsense. One has to learn the hype language, debunk it, etc.
Why do you think IT has gotten better? Amazon had a better and faster website with far better search and products 20 years ago. No amount of "AI" will fix that.
Depends on the context. You have to keep in mind: it is not a goal of our society or economic system to provide you with a stable, rewarding job. In fact, the incentives are to take that away from you ASAP.
Before software engineers go celebrate this tech, they need realize they're going to end up like rust-belt factory workers the day after the plant closed. They're not special, and society won't be any kinder to them.
> ...and even wiser to be in charge of and operate the replacement.
You'll likely only get to do that if your boss doesn't know about it.
Don’t let cynics rule your country. Go vote. There’s no rule that things have to stay awful.
We seem to agree as this is more or less exactly the my point. Striving to keep the status quo is a futile path. Eventually things change. Be ready. The best advice I've ever got work (and maybe even life) wise is to always have alternatives. If you don't have alternatives, you literally have no choice.
Those alternatives are going to be worse for you, because if they weren't, why didn't you switch already? And if a flood of your peers are pursing alternatives at the same time, you'll probably experience an even poorer outcome than you expected (e.g. everyone getting laid off and trying to make ends meet driving for Uber at the same time). Then, AI is really properly understood as a "fuck the white-collar middle-class" tech, and it's probably going to fuck up your backup plans at about the same time as it fucks up your status quo.
You're also describing a highly individualistic strategy, for someone acting on his own. At this point, the correct strategy is probably collective action, which can at least delay and control the change to something more manageable. But software engineers have been too "special snowflake" about themselves to have laid the groundwork for that, and are acutely vulnerable.
I do concur it is an individualistic strategy, and as you mentioned unionization might have helped. But, then again it might not. Developers are partially unionized where I live, and I'm not so sure it's going to help. It might absorb some of the impact. Let's see in a couple of years.
