It's sad to see people lose jobs because executives believe AI could replace them. If it's any consolation, at some point most of those executives could be replaced by AI too.
ChatGPT can go long way designing printed circuit boards with text based KiCad. Luckily most companies stick to the expensive overengineered (for normal boards) tools like Altium. That part of workforce is safe for a while.
I am moving from electrical engineer to electrician right now. The money is the same (in Germany). I vibecoded my CRM/invoicing/protocol generation/warehouse tool by myself. Over 120 iterations with ChatGPT. And this was scary!!! A decade ago such development would cost 6 figures to develop and 5000-8000€ a year to use. Now it’s on my computer working the way I want. <100€, no need for software team.
I used to repair cars. I guess if nothing else works, I can do that until EVs take over that.
By the way, my local bike shop has a one month long (!!!) queue for repairs. Just saying.
Where I live many, many older people are now on e-bikes. They are good paying customers, and most don't want to work on their bikes themselves (unlike hobbyists with the pushbikes).
And today they are taken aback by any reasonable hourly rate because a new bike from China costs less than a few hours of your work. Good luck! Oh, and if you really follow through on this make sure you copy Sheldon's pages just in case they ever go down, you'll have an edge over the rest.
Why do we have middle managers still, while we're replacing programmers? Really says a lot about how decisions are made, we're hierarchical monkeys at the core.
How could you ever think otherwise?
If you have only bad middle management around you then it might be time to either step up and do it better or find a different place to work, since there are places with excellent middle management.
At FAANG, good middle managers are the exception, the promotion process incentivizes different behaviors. A manager taking care of their team or, worse, pushing back on their boss isn't playing the right game.
I'll believe this the day an AI model can golf with an executive, or wine and dine and call hookers in an overnight business meeting. Sure, that's not every exec, but that's common enough that AI isn't going to work there.