If you are a “programmer” you are going to be the kids in the sweatshop. On the enterprise dev side where most developers work, it’s been headed in that direction for at least a decade where it was easy enough to become a “good enough” generic full stack/mobile/web etc dev.

Even on the BigTech side being able to reverse a btree on the whiteboard and having on your resume that you were a mid level developer isn’t enough either anymore

If you look at the comp on that side, it’s also stagnated for decade. AI has just accelerated that trend.

While my job has been at various percentages to produce code for 30 years, it’s been well over a decade since I had to sell myself on “I codez real gud”. I sell myself as a “software engineer” who can go from ambiguous business and technical requirements, deal with politics, XYProblems, etc