Raw LLM Responses

Thanks for highlighting my comment! To expand, I have worked in manufacturing for 12 years - 6 years as a supervisor and 2 years as an engineering tech. The last 4 years, I've worked as a consultant doing software/data engineering, and I specialize in automating data and manufacturing processes in a digital sense (for example, whenever a pallet of goods is completed, we automate of reporting all the labor times, machine details, inputs consumption and actually creating the sellable units in the ERP/MES system so that it can be sold). My dad and grandfather all also worked in manufacturing their whole careers. Manufacturing went through a similar shift when manufacturing robotics and automation started hitting the floors, everyone thought we'd be losing our jobs to a robot. But, any job search will show thousands of open manufacturing jobs in a variety of sub-industries. The only difference between then and now is that a single Operator can do a whole lot more with less stress, than my grandfather did in his day. I've implemented dozens of automation projects over the years, and not a single person has lost their job because of it. Instead, a lot of headache tasks were taken away and automated, Operators can focus more on things like quality and output. And, now that it does take more skill to work with the robotics and automation, the salary of manufacturing operators has risen over the years as well. While an individual factory may employee less workers, more factories have popped up because the labor needs are less, and it's easier than ever to manufacture goods. And, while they may not know every detail about the robotics and automation software and processes, all of these Operators know enough to know when something is wrong, not working correctly and perform basic maintenance tasks to get back up and running. I think these AI tools will produce a similar effect. Using AI tools, an individual company may need less engineers, but more companies could pop up. And we will see something similar to manufacturing as well - you'll have your Operators (Junior devs) who can use the tools available to do a lot of the basic fixes for when things are wrong, but may not have the same understanding of code as Senior Operators/Technicians/Engineers, but can fix it well enough. For the big problems, those seniors will come in and do the more in detail fixing/updates. Now, those Manufacturing Operators did have to learn a lot of new skills to stay employed, because the new technology required it. Same goes for us. We need to learn to use the new tools and learn the new skills. Over time, there may be less software engineers. Most likely too, the first to go will be those who took up coding because it was a fast way to make money. Those who enjoy solving problems and building things, will be able to keep their careers - even if they look different than 5 years ago. There is no career nor role that remains static anymore anyways. Another thing I have learned as a consultant - unless the client can describe 100% what they want, without anyone to interpret or think of the details that they might not know of, software engineers will always have a role. Not everyone knows software well enough to describe to a prompt what needs to be done, or review the architecture for issues.