My guess, the people most worried were never really good at their job and easy to replace.
The better S.E. know that silly business people may replace them with AI at first, then quickly realize they have NO IDEA on how to describe what the business needs.
I dealt with these people, they think they can describe their business in just a few words and get angry when you ask for more details, I can just imagine the mess they will make when a piece of software they THINK they own starts to ask detailed questions.
If you only need to keep the "better software engineer" and can replace the rest with AI that'll still be a drastic cull... we may very well end up with a degree of that.
The better S.E. know that silly business people may replace them with AI at first, then quickly realize they have NO IDEA on how to describe what the business needs.
I dealt with these people, they think they can describe their business in just a few words and get angry when you ask for more details, I can just imagine the mess they will make when a piece of software they THINK they own starts to ask detailed questions.