> If AI removes one of my co-workers, our competitors will keep the co-worker and out-compete us.

This assumes that the companies' business growth is a function of the amount of code written, but that would not make much sense for a software company.

Many companies (including mine) are building our product with an engineering team 1/4 the size of what would have been required a few years ago. The whole idea is that we can build the machine to scale our business with far fewer workers.

> This seems unlikely

This is already happening. Fewer people are getting hired. Companies are quietly (sometimes not, like Block) letting people go. At a personal level all the leaders in my company are sounding the “catch up or you’ll be left behind” alarm. People are going to be let go at an accelerated pace in the future (1-3 years).

It depends on the "shape" of the company. Larger companies have a lot more of what I call "Conway Overhead", basically a mix of legit coordination overhead and bureaucracy. Startups by necessity have a lot less of that, and so are better "shaped" to fully harness AI.

> This seems unlikely.

It is absolutely likely. The hiring market for juniors is fucked atm.

There's definitely tone deaf statements from managers/leaders like "AI will allow us to do more with less headcount!" As if the end worker is supposed to be excited about that, knuckleheads, lol.