When I went into software engineering in the early 1980s, several people told me that had no future, since programmers would soon be automated away.

I ignored that, in part because I had no other skill I wanted to do 5 days a week, and it's of course been incredibly rewarding.

This time it definitely is different, and maybe the profession moves into a new and very different era. If SWEs will hit harder times and job losses, I don't think we have much standing to complain, given how many professions we have automated away during the last 50 years...