If you automate away some other person's job, then you can capture at portion of their wage, and pass the savings on to the client. Once you "own" a market, then you can charge whatever the market will bear.
Software engineers aren't automating away their jobs, they are automating away someone else's job.
I feel many people are just reading the first paragraph of my post and reacting to that, my point is further down in my original post.
Still to reply to your comment:
Sure, in the short term that is true, but I'm thinking long-term consequences... If you would have told me ten years ago where we would be at today with AI development I wouldn't have believed it. Would you? So where will we be in another ten years?
> Software engineers aren't automating away their jobs, they are automating away someone else's job.
That's the best case scenario.
Right now we're talking about automating away someone's _software engineering_ job. You could end up on either side of that fence.
When AI enables less-capable (cheaper) software engineers to do your job, the 5x programmer skills that you have won't make you safe. If AI quality control allows your employer to offshore jobs with higher reliability, it won't be pleasant.
Just keep your eyes open to the changes as they come.
Every inventor and engineer did it. It is not about the labour hours saved, but what is done with the saving and how the savings are used.
We have been making huge leaps in productivity gains for the last many decades but the gains have shall I say not put into progress of all mankind but to maintain the status quo of the profit based system by any means necessary.
Software engineers aren't automating away their jobs, they are automating away someone else's job.