The problem isn’t whether or not companies need us— it’s about how many of us they need (demand), and how many of us there are (supply), because that determines our value. Companies pay people what they’ll work for, not based on how much they contribute to the bottom line; in economics, paying more than you have to for anything, including labor, is the irrational path. A steady, high demand for software developers has kept salaries high because that’s the only way they could get capable people to work for them.

The higher-end of markets aren’t immune to this. As the demand for lower-level workers drops, people will upskill trying to move up rather than get lopped off. Since there are fewer positions the further up the hierarchy you get, you don’t need a huge increase in supply to affect demand. That’s when you start seeing the most experienced, highest-earning people getting shit-canned because someone is willing to do a good-enough version of their role for 2/3 their sizable salary.

This can all happen without a single entire role being completely automated out of existence.

Business can remain irrational longer than you can remain financially solvent.

The value-cost ratio is all that matters to a company. Yes, that implies that they are assuming all variations of value are achievable by AI which isn’t true and probably won’t ever be. But they do think that, nearly all of them. Because they don’t understand value. This has been true since the very first corporation. And that’s the problem. They will see a totally cheesed and squeezed metric telling them AI can reach 40% of the value of a “ ___ engineer “ at 10% of the cost and lay off engineers until shit starts exploding. And the stock market will strongly reward that decision.

>irrational management, and that predates AI

actually, it's AI that will be doing the predating

> I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable.

Employees in knowledge work don’t generate constant value at all times. And companies want value at all times (that needs to be ever increasing). You’re not disposable at all point in time if you’re providing value at that point in time.

Companies shutdown profitable divisions/products because they aren't profitable enough. 'Providing value' is determined at a whim and by metrics out of your control.

the goalposts for providing value are changing faster than ever

Only quibble that in some areas like the games industry, being disposable (qua susceptibility to layoffs) was closer to the status quo well before AI came around.

I was and I did. Now there's nobody on the team who can fulfil something we promised to our biggest customer a few months ago. Shrug not my problem because I don't work there.

> I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable.

Businesses want worker fungibility and to reduce bus favor from having single point of failures. That usually, but not always, flies in the face of irreplaceability.