Many companies that see themselves as non-technical at the core prefer building solutions with an army of intermediate developers that are hot swappable. Having highly skilled developers is a risk for them.

Unlikely. Microsoft had layoffs everywhere except India. There they keep hiring more. As song as the can keep upskilling themselves while still being much cheaper than US workers they won't fear unemployment.

Just yesterday I saw on X a video of a Miami hotel where the check-in procedure was via a video call to a receptionist in India.

Six months from now, that singular worker if they are still employed, will manage a high number of receptionist avatars. And then they themselves will be replaced. It will still lead to a massive collapse in the labor market and with all of that excess labor, existing jobs while being overworked will still see flat to decreasing wages.

You overestimate how chatbots can replace people.

Most people underestimate how strongly capital wants to displace labor, even if the outcomes are demonstrably worse. Esp in a captured scenario like hotel reception, you have already booked, you aren't going anywhere else.

If that were true, automatic coffee vending machines would have made baristas unemployed a long time age.

You know senior developers can also be off-shored, right?

Blowing away the junior -> senior pipeline would, on average, hit every country the same.

Though it raises an interesting point: if a country like India or China did make the investment in hiring, paying, and mentoring junior people but e.g. the US didn't, then you could see a massive shift in the global center of gravity around software expertise in 10 years (plus or minus).

Someone is going to be the best at planning for and investing in the future on this, and someone is going to maximally wishful thinking / short-term thinking this, and seductive-but-not-really-there vibe coding is probably going to be a major pivot point there.

This is such an important point. Not sure about India, which is still very market forces driven, but china can just force its employers to do whatever is of strategic importance. That’s long gone in the US. Market forces here will only ever optimize for short term game, shooting ourselves in the chest.