When thinking about automation people overindex on their current class biases. For 20 years we heard that robots were going to take over the “burger flipper” jobs. Why was it so easy to think that robots could replace fast food workers? Because they were the lowest rung on the career ladder, so it felt natural that they would be the first ones to get replaced.

Similarly, it’s easy to think that the lowly peons in the engineering world are going to get replaced and we’ll all be doing the job of directors and CEOs in the future, but that doesn’t really make sense to me.

Being able to whip your army of AI employees 3% better than your competitor doesn’t (usually) give any lasting advantage.

What does give an advantage is: specialized deep knowledge, building relationships and trust with users and customers, and having a good sense of design/ux/etc.

Like maybe that’s some of the job of a manager/director/CEO, but not anyone that I’ve worked with.