> next time op comes up for air is when he finds out their employer replaced them with a college student making $10/hour.

I mean numerous firms seem to already be doing this, and they're making HN's front page regularly for week-long downtimes, blog posts tearing them apart for shockingly shit engineering practices, and their userbase in open rebellion from the sheer STATE of the product.

My employer has absolutely no interest in cutting any engineering staff in favor of AI. But we're also not a VC-funded human misery mill, and we have a sustainable business model involving selling actual products, so these facts may be related to that.