AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard' Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman has suggested firing junior workers because AI can do their jobs is "the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Garman made that remark in conversation with AI investor Matthew Berman, during which he talked up AWS’s Kiro AI-assisted coding tool and said he's encountered business leaders who think …
It is reassuring to learn that an important industrial figure is aware that you need to educate and train actual humans if you want your company to thrive in the future.
Pseudo-AI can eventually be a useful crutch, but it is nothing but a crutch. If you don't have a human to ask the proper questions, pseudo-AI will never be able to answer (whether right or, more likely, wrong).
Unfortunately, all the educators who were concerned with teaching people to think rather than simply training them to pass exams were jettisoned from the system because qualitative results are hard to measure.
Probably just as well for AWS, though, as the rapid deployment of AI seems to depend on an excess of credulity.
I was taught to think. If I was taught to pass exams then everyone around me, including myself, would've done sufficiently well each and every test with little to no effort but maybe with plenty of hand-holding along the way -- among other signs that didn't present themselves.
"I was taught to think. If I was taught to pass exams then everyone around me, including myself, would've done sufficiently well each and every test with little to no effort but maybe with plenty of hand-holding along the way"
I've always wanted to know "why" so I've done ok. I've also learned how to take tests since it's important to pass so I'm not having to resit exams for various certifications which are often complete BS to begin with for anybody that knows what they are doing already. It also saves loads of time to not retake courses or exams. The wall behind me has a whole bunch of certificates mainly as a reminder of the ones I have. I never did have the time and money to get qualifications in physics, but I've done a lot of the coursework and use the concepts all of the time. At one point I thought to get a graduate degree in nuclear physics, but it cost way to much to ever pay back when I was in my forties. Maybe it would have if I did it in my twenties and was able to get a good position and work up the salary ladder, but the interest on the loans would have been a burden. These days it's fun to audit the courses online from MIT and Berkley.
Education in the UK and other western nations is in a very poor state. Children are assessed on absorbing the narrative not coming up with logically justified original thought. Even maths is being relegated to computer based multi-choice. No marks for a simple typo but correct thought process.
I find myself at odds with the majority because I went to a good school where debate & dissent was supported if it came from evidence and logic. We were allowed to question and to dig deeper into interesting topics.
Calculators are very useful things. When they were rolled out, we were assured that children would still be taught maths. Wind forward to today, and ask random people to do basics maths. The vast majority will be absolutely useless at it. We are now re-running that but with 'everything' instead of 'maths'.
Give people an opportunity to cheat/slack, and the vast majority will take it.
Indeed.
I'm highly literate but have borderline Discalculia when it comes to numbers.
I was there in the 70s when schools started letting the primative calculators of the time into classrooms.
My first one was the original Sinclair model.
If you're trying to solve an equation then adding a couple of numbers together with a calculator doesn't matter - what's important is to understand the structure and how to reduce it down.
Calculators didn't contribute to the decline of "maths." Kids getting distracted, not seeing job viability (and wealth) tied to math skills, etc... all that soft stuff contributed to it. Not to mention that if a generation gets nonchalant towards a topic, the related subject teachers who come out of that gen will struggle with the corresponding skill set even more than usual. This results in both the transmission and the reception of knowledge more susceptible to flaw.
It's a tricky one. Discard accelerators and slow product development or not? Obviously the money men only think of the next year. However, I think we have reached the stage in the developed world where we need to forsake a little short term greed for quality of life. In fact the short term greed has probably already reduced overall wealth whilst concentrating it into the hands of a few.
"Calculators are very useful things. When they were rolled out, we were assured that children would still be taught maths. Wind forward to today, and ask random people to do basics maths. The vast majority will be absolutely useless at it. We are now re-running that but with 'everything' instead of 'maths'."
That's OK. If people have stopped learning maths and how to do simple arithmetic in their heads, I'll always have a way to get money if I'm desperate. I'm amazed at how long it can take for a cashier to sort out my change if I don't simply hand them a $20 bill even when they can punch the amount I've handed them into the register and give me back correct change. If the bill was $17.43, I might give them $22.43 so I get a fiver back rather than $1 bills and coins. Most of the time they try to hand me back the $2 and often the coins as well. The light dimly illuminates when they see what the change is when I make them work for it.
"If the bill was $17.43, I might give them $22.43 so I get a fiver back rather than $1 bills and coins. Most of the time they try to hand me back the $2 and often the coins as well. The light dimly illuminates when they see what the change is when I make them work for it."
I frequently do that sort of thing as well and have noticed that in the past 5-6 years that people (not just young people but predominately them) just don't know how to react to that - I guess it's a combination of they themselves being used to pay for everything digitally rather than using cash plus a lack of mental mathematical ability; even when exactly as you said the till tells them exacty how much change to give.
I remember having that happen, and it was a much simpler sum, the total was something like £4.10 and I gave the cashier a £5.00 note, and said "I have the 10p"
Her: What?
Me: I have the 10p (holding it out to her)
Her: [Puzzled] - but £5.00 covers it, I don't want more. [looks at me like I'm dumb]
Me: But if I give you this, you can simply give me a £1 coin in change.
Her: But the change is 90p.
I gave up, and receive my 90p in change. I was tempted to visibly add my 10p to it and say "Can you exchange this change for a £1 coin please"!
He should look at their certifications then. They are the usual learn by rote, there's only 1 way the vendor way. I also did one of their training courses a few years ago on AI and emailed them to explain that a lot of the code examples don't work or use deprecated calls no longer supported. I was informed I was not supposed to actually run them ... sigh.
Is this even a new problem, though? While companies have long been aware that they require educated and trained employees, the issue in recent decades is they expect the benefit of that without the burden of doing so themselves.
They expect someone else to have paid for that education and for some other company to have given them experience and training, so that they can then swoop in and poach them.
Which is an obvious problem when everyone has that attitude.
"The plumber who's just been here in the European south used to be a chemical engineer. He's a qualified electrician as well. It's already getting to the stage where one trade isn't sufficient to keep you busy full time."
It's never a bad idea to have experience and qualifications in various things. If the plumber was made redundant from a chemical engineering position, electrical and plumbing can pay well enough to not wind up in the streets if one hasn't grossly overextended themselves. It's also easy to find temp work in those things while you shop your resume around for your next Chem job if you want to stay in that.
A friend of mine that worked at the same bar when we were in our 20's could cut hair. At one point, I needed my hair cut and he wanted some extra money. He set up a chair outside his door in the apartment complex where he lived (easy to clean up there) and afterwards had a nice little side hustle cutting hair for a bunch of his neighbors. It's a useful portable skill and would be great for a college student to earn some "tea" money while at uni. When I was young, my dad cut my hair since a flat-top was dead simple and my hair grew like a weed.
Yes, until they loosen up on the illegal immigration laws because they discover that Western economies cannot operate without an exploited class of labor. When they do, they will cut the licensing requirements to watching YouTube videos and only hire people that'll work for $3.35/hr, and they don't get to count every hour. In the end, bean counters win every time.
The only sure job is to be a pinstripe suit type (or Wall Street type, etc) and own the labor. The way to prosperity is NEVER hard work, it's confiscating the benefits of another's hard work.
"they discover that Western economies cannot operate without an exploited class of labor. "
If the cost of groceries went up slightly, people might find they don't have the money to eat out as often. If they can't hire a nanny or maid service, they would be, gasp, forced to raise their own children and clean their own homes. The labor being exploited is funding luxuries more than anything else. Even many of those jobs are being automated such as picking crops. Robots are increasingly able to do it better and can be deployed multiple times in one field to harvest more of the crop since it's too expensive to do that with humans if they aren't able to work at peak return.
There will always be exploitation of the uneducated. Until parents realize that education is much more important, generations won't improve. I have two degrees and loads of experience in many things as well as enough knowledge about more that I can lie about, I'm not stuck having to work for an employer that's unpleasant. I also keep a reserve of FU money to insulate myself. I avoid extending myself through easy credit. I bought a home and paid it off. While it's not in an affluent neighborhood nor as nice a Buckingham Palace, it's all mine. The car is modest and paid for. In short, I don't "keep up with the Jones's". A lot of this I've had to learn at the school of hard knocks and would have much preferred to learn it at home or school as I did with making strawberry jam from gran (eating some now, yum!).
> At least until there is a glut of plumbers and electricians because all the high school kids
Its Barbers shops around here that are the flavour of the year...coffee shops before that
However the high street is dying slowly and even the charity shops are suffering and they are like the nuclear equivalent of cockroaches!
Ahh - but C-Suite don't care. It's one less wage to pay.
I see fewer people being employed at junior levels. That leads to less people to train. You're left looking for people at a level no-one has been trained to.
WE know AI is just a tool. Many of us are smart enough to know when that tool is not working properly or effectively. If we're not training new talent, then I can only see this situation getting worse.
Kind of like automation and the mess that can make. I've interviewed candidates that were totally unable to explain how to diagnose/fix a broken system because 'there was no automation to do it for them'.
I agree. You will don't get good results from AI without the understanding to guide it. Few need to write assembler anymore. Maybe AI will become the human syntax high level language we previously failed to create. The models I've used go off the tracks if you ask for whole modules. Not always obvious at the time but you find architecturally they make a lot of wrong turns even if they work in isolation. You don't realise until later when you have to look in detail. For example it will often produce you a very specific API rather than a generic one that can be used for different circumstances. I think because it cannot see the big picture and anticipate the next requirement. Something (some) humans can be good at. It doesn't question either. We humans might say, why do you want it like that and there's a proper dialogue.
I had to call out a gas engineer on a Saturday as my boiler wasn’t coming on. Did the usual turn on and turn off nothing. Cost me £280 for less than an hours work. He probably did about 30 minutes.
I am considering getting trained in plumbing/electrician along with my current tech role.
To legally fix a boiler in the UK you don’t need decades of wizardry - you need ACS quals (CCN1, CENWAT), a supervised portfolio, and Gas Safe registration. That can be done in months if you take the fast-track route. The reality is most “repairs” are swapping a PCB, fan, thermistor, diverter valve, or just repressurising and resetting. The hardest part is often just getting to the thing - half the country has boilers entombed in kitchen cupboards or buried behind clutter. And it’s not like you’re dealing with an infinite variety of machines: there are service manuals, and only a handful of common models you’ll see again and again. The mystique isn’t “years of experience,” it’s the piece of paper that lets you legally touch it and the willingness to show up on a Saturday for £280.
"The mystique isn’t “years of experience,” it’s the piece of paper that lets you legally touch it and the willingness to show up on a Saturday for £280."
And people with a boiler on the outs will be willingly to pay that £280 to have it working again. If there's a fault with an electrical outlet, you might just leave the breaker off and work around it until Monday during business hours, but a cold boiler or blocked loo is another matter.
Hmm not sure. There are a lot of boilers out there, it's not just one or even one make. We have an old one, the servicing engineer said, don't let this one go if you can help it, it'll run for years, the modern ones don't and what you save on fuel use you'll spend double on fixing / replacing.
"That’s a standard spiel. Old models mean cheaper parts, engineers know them inside out, and margins are better. Easier to frame it as ‘built to last’ than admit it’s just more profitable and familiar to work on."
It's a little from column A and a little from column B. Even if a new boiler is more efficient, they aren't wrong that the increased price won't be offset for years so spending a fraction of new to repair the one you have can be better value. That they have the parts and experience is good for them as they don't have to spend the time to learn the new boiler as well as needing to bring their whole tool kit in to rearrange the pipes to hook up to the new boiler. They can be off to the next service call much quicker and charge another basic call out fee.
That's so true... you can get your $20/hr "handyman" to come and spend the day figuring out how something is supposed to go, or you can call a $100/hr professional (e.g. electricians, service technicians) that comes promptly, in and out in half an hour, no muss, no fuss, no mess.
A dumb ass "handyman" will paint the floor first, wait for it to dry, then paint the walls and ceiling the next day and have to fix up the floor where paint dripped on it again (for a recent example). You could have gotten professional painters that would have gotten all of it done in a day (maybe come back the next day to remove tape and put light switch covers/fixtures back), v.s. having to put up with, and pay, Mr. Clever for a week and a half.
Handyman here.
I don't know what craphole state you live in, but in mine I have to be a licensed contractor. I can assure you we're held to a higher standard than Cletus with his three hammers that you hired to do your painting because he works for $20/hour plus a pack of smokes. My rates start at $100/hour and go up if I have to go into an attic or a crawl space or anywhere else icky. My calendar remains booked. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
This is not as "silly" as it sounds.
Being any electrician is now way more complicated and both a technically and a legally complex undertaking.
On the other hand, being an engineer is way easier, as enormous amounts of the maths that engineer used to do, is now embedded in dedicated software. Not only does software do the calculations, but your simply don't need to know what the calculations are, because they are completely hidden inside the software.
A basic graduate engineer has far less hours of experience requirement, far less legal obligation, has had far less (or zero) mandatory skills evaluation, and was able to pass with 50% in exams (60% for electricians here).
I am encouraging my son to become registered to do electrician work when he has finished his EE degree, as I am a firm believer that a proper engineer should be fully competent "on the tools" as well.
That’s not really true. It’s like saying the Highway Code is complicated - sure, written down it looks like a maze, but ask any experienced driver to cite it chapter and verse and they can’t. Doesn’t mean driving itself is complex, it’s just a barrier to entry. Same with electrical regs: the paperwork is heavy, the day-to-day trade work is not some mystical craft.
Neither is engineering now. That is my point. The delta between them has shrunk over the decades. In 1960 an electrician was a pretty simple job with wires, and negligible day to day legal interaction. Try keeping a factory running today. The electricians are doing exactly the same process control and machine control work as the EEs - plus the wiring, plus the legal paperwork.
On the flip side, doing, say, a power network analysis in 1960 meant actually calculating matrix maths by hand. Now it is done entirely by s/w, including knowing what calculations to do, and even the capacities factors and ratings of the cables.
Engineering has become easier, the trades have become more technical.
And firing them early IS "teaching them ... just as much as you ever have": specifically "you are nothing to us".
"If you don't come with useful skills pre-installed, we're not going to teach you - why do you think we put 'needs 5 years experience of (tech released last year)' in our job ads for your junior position?"
Of course you don't fire your cheapest staff. You fire your most expensive staff and replace them with AI operated by the cheapest staff!
That is the only way to continue the race to the bottom and dig that bigger and deeper hole so you may continue the race to the bottom just a moment longer.
Of course you don't fire your cheapest staff. You fire your most expensive staff and replace them with AI operated by the cheapest staff!
Precisely.
How long before the more insightful of these inexpensive AI wranglers see the proverbial writing on the wall and sod off well before becoming experienced, expensive staff destined for the chop. Presumably that exodus would thin the ranks of the inexpensive to a residue of the merely cheap.
Difficult to see how anyone sufficiently clever to get into a University (or even able to tie their shoelaces) would seriously contemplate a career in development (or IT generally) nowadays.
if he lives up to his word and hires those kids - to become experienced developers using AI in their workflow where it adds value, and think for themselves where it counts.
These kids could become the true experts on AI usage in the future - and recognize AI compised rubbish in a heartbeat.
But I fear some other C** role and/or the shareholders may push him to act differently.
One can only hope for the best.
The AWS boss calls firing juniors “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” and the article gushes like it’s some grand defence of workers. But read it carefully: it’s not about people at all - it’s about supply chain management. Juniors aren’t humans with careers or dignity, they’re “the cheapest employees you have,” raw material to be stockpiled so you’ve got mid-levels to promote later.
Even the fluffy bit about “teaching kids how to think” isn’t about education - it’s about keeping labour pliable, endlessly reskilled, forever adaptable to whatever AWS wants this quarter. No stable trades, no lasting expertise, just an obedient workforce on tap.
It’s the language of commodities: people as cheap inputs in a corporate machine, to be moulded, recycled, and replaced.
I suspect this is desperate claw-back from the previous "AI will replace workers" pitch due to the dramatic share price drop in AI company valuations over the last few days.
As a sales strategy, telling the very people who are the early adopters and evangalists of any new technology that they were worthless and that AI was going to replace them, was not the smartest move in the world.
“How's that going to work when ten years in the future you have no one that has learned anything,” he asked.
Precisely! Exactly what I've been saying for the last 3 years. All we old farts in our 50s have made a nice bit of bunce in this game, so many of us usually call it quits in our late 50s and bugger off to retirement. With no one young taking up the entry-level posts 'cos the jobs have all been wiped out, there's going to be a gaping wound in the job market, especially technical roles. I learned how to think mostly on the job working with seasoned pros, being mentored is one of the most crucial things a techie needs.
Still if you offer me some whacking great hourly rate to come out of retirement in 10 years time to admin some old Solaris/HP/AIX kit, I might do it for 6 months just to pay for a few cruises to keep the missus happy!
But you leave out the rest of the quote:
“My view is you absolutely want to keep hiring kids out of college and teaching them the right ways to go build software and decompose problems and think about it, just as much as you ever have.”In other words, keep hiring the cheap labor.
Once they gain a bit of seniority and their pay starts to rise commensurately, then you can them and hire a bunch more "kids out of college" (preferably H-1Bs who you can exploit because you hold their literal lives in your hands).
Cynical? Moi?
And remember what the A in AWS is ? Amazon - yes, the same Amazon that goes to great lengths to prevent unions getting into it's warehouses as that would allow the unions to protect their workers from outright exploitation and dangerous working practices.
And that's one of the reasons I try to avoid buying anything from Amazon if I can avoid it.
"I have never bought anything from Amazon.
It's not hard at all - everything on Amazon is pretty much 20%-50% more expensive than elsewhere."
Early on I bought some stuff from Amazon, but nothing since then. So much of what they peddle is crap and you don't find out until it's launched onto your doorstep and remains long enough for you to retrieve it. If there's something I can buy at a local store, I do that. If there's an issue, I can take it back but I get to fiddle with it first to see how janky it is to start with. One of the last times I went to a Walmart, I was taken in by a "sale". When I went to the store and saw the item that appeared to be a great deal, it was bad, very bad and they knew it which is why they had better, more expensive models sitting on either side of it. I didn't need my rocket surgeon skills to see what they were doing there. So, yes, just like Amazon, Walmart is more expensive in reality although you can buy one use things for little money. I often buy older products from estate sales that aren't shiny, but twenty years old and likely to outlive me in regular use.
Even though it might not be the most sympathetic way to look at it, the amoral, financial approach is valuable, both because it's far closer to the ethical ideal than what other people are saying and it can convince people who don't care about the moral argument. Pointing out that something is a bad idea which will harm you is often a little more likely to make someone stop it rather than saying that doing it makes you a bad person and stopping there. People often think their actions are sufficiently ethical and don't listen to such arguments, and the unpleasantness of being called evil leads them to often react strongly against any such statement.
That is if we accept the ethical argument, and I'm not sure I do to the level you would. This has come up before. When each type of business first got access to computers, people lost their jobs. People who used to get paid to do mathematical operations by hand, then doing them with the assistance of a basic calculator, were unnecessary now that the computer could automatically run all the calculations, take action based on the number, and present the results to the person who originally asked for them. I don't think it was unethical to use them, even though some people suffered as a result. That particular change was very positive for many of the people who lost their jobs anyway because some of those people were able to get the job where they told the computer what calculations to do*, but even if that hadn't happened, I would much rather try to help those who lost their jobs rather than try to prevent the technology being developed or used. My problem with LLMs is that they don't and can't actually replace the workers correctly. Trying it will be stupid for the reasons the AWS boss described but will also be unethical, primarily to the customers who are now lumbered with AI-written code they can't fix and AI support they can't make progress with. Those few companies who have actually fired workers and replaced them with AI, as opposed to those who say they're doing it but do nothing, have already shown this effect. They're usually trying to hire someone back quickly when their AI solution breaks things.
"When each type of business first got access to computers, people lost their jobs."
If AI is being used as a more efficient tool, it can cut down on the number of people needed to perform certain jobs. While there is no longer a need to have a room full of people with adding machines, there's still a need to have people that know how to do that work that can set it up for a computer to do the calculations. What too many companies believe is they can use AI to eliminate the whole department. That will lead to the worst part of outsourcing and that's relying on outside entities to do your work for you. Once they see that you are completely reliant, the price goes up. If the outside company goes bust or decides that a service is no longer one they want to provide, the company that's deleted their own department is left flailing to find a replacement. They don't have anybody to do the work and have lost the insight to how the work is done at all. That's a bit of an issue if one Monday morning the outside service isn't responding and their VM has a recording saying they've ceased operations or the numbers are no longer valid.
Way back I had an older car with a carburetor. There was a local shop that was really good at reconditioning and repairing them. The last time I called, the old guy that used to do that work had retired and they didn't have anybody that knew how to do it. Luckily for me, I wanted them to rebuild a spare I picked up on the cheap as a backup to the one on the car and wasn't left car-less.
teaching workers in tech how to think about tech is more valuable than proficiency with a specific language, tool or service.
A solid grounding in the basics of software design (architecture) as well as technical specifications of aspects of that design are needed.
Take a web application - juniors would do well to lean heavily into, for example, internet protocols.
To lean heavily into examples of good architecture and why it’s good. For that, schematic diagrams are good, along with plain old spoken language descriptions of how everything works together and why it’s a good idea.
The fundamentals of software lifecycles, of continuous development, all computer language agnostic.
Pragmatic programming, the art of simplicity, reuse, DRY, I/O, the black box one thing in, one thing out and unit tests.
All of that stuff.
Leave the syntax to IDE tooling, to AI agents if you will. THAT is where LLMs are at for software engineering.
Just another tool and not a replacement for humans.
> AI can do their jobs is "the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
I hear dumber things about any time a senior mangler opens his mouth.
> its value by what percentage of code it contributes... “It’s a silly metric,”
This is the well-known(?) LOC fallacy- pay programmers by the Lines Of Code they turn in. But it seems nobody remembers Fred Brooks and that train of thought. Except folks who sell a 'better' tool (DevEx etc).
First they cut the middle managers, now they're looking at the rookies... Guess that just leaves the greybeards standing, huh?
I'm 38 and probably going to get discriminated against on the basis of age, sooner rather than later, but I feel a little less bad now that it's confirmed younger people get the raw deal, too. At least when it comes to getting hired or fired.
It's basically always a bad time to get and hold a job. Top decision makers nearly always seem to suck and we're just barreling along as a society, getting lucky and kicking the can down the road for the next generation to worry about. If it's not AI then it'd be something else.
"I'm 38 and probably going to get discriminated against on the basis of age, sooner rather than later,"
Being a ways past you, I can assure you that you should be prepared for it. Make sure your resume doesn't have anything in it that hints at your age. The past positions you've held should start being dropped for the later ones since employers will want your dates of employment. I started working while I was pretty young so while I will mention the experience, I don't admit to when I was doing those things. The good thing is that usually only the most recent experience is going to be considered relevant.
"Start contracting right now and never look back."
If you have the temperament, sure. Some people need more structure or just can't do all of the things needed to be their own business. There isn't a whole lot of in between. I know plenty of creative people that are hopeless at business.
"need to learn how to learn"
My god he's bang on target with the no.1 problem that will decimate the West if we don't change. Of course it means they may disagree with governments and existing corporate leaders if that can be stomached. Not being hammered into one grey mass is what gave the West world leading innovation over more restrictive regimes. A better way of life and more wealth but we are in danger of giving that up.
In a Bay Area paper...
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/young-adults-changing-career-paths-ai-20824566.php
"...But young adults entering the workforce are facing a new challenge that is increasing the attractiveness of blue-collar jobs: the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
Data from the Federal Reserve shows that among recent college graduates, the unemployment rates for majors once heralded as tickets to high-salary, high-status jobs like computer engineering and computer science were 7.5% and 6.1%, respectively. In contrast, construction services majors’ unemployment rate was just 0.7%. "
It'll take a few big companies firing valuable employees, switching to AI then going bankrupt 6 months later before the bubble bursts.
It's like the tech bubble back in the 90s.
Once a few "tech bros" are out on the street maybe things will calm down.
I'm enjoying watching companies throwing millions at this stuff - all of which they're going to lose.
Garman said "How's that going to work when ten years in the future you have no one that has learned anything..." Karl Marx would like a word with you. He didn't coin the term "race to the bottom", but that's the bottom line of his critique of capitalism. In Marx's argument, wages would go down because each factory owner had to undercut the others in order to make a profit; in the modern era, it could mean that education goes down, as each company tries not to hire young inexperienced workers.
Of course you can argue that Marx was wrong, and that Garman's worry won't come to pass.
"...that approach is necessary because technological development is now so rapid it’s no longer sensible to expect that studying narrow skills can sustain a career for 30 years."
50 years ago, on the advice of my physics professor, I decided that studying narrow skills wasn't a sensible career choice, got a degree in Engineering Physics instead of straight EE, and became more of a generalist. I did wind up specializing along the way, but that was more adaptation in the presence of opportunity than specialization beforehand. It was a good idea then, it's a good idea now.
And yes, failing to foster the development of new talent is a dead-end proposition, whether you supplant them with AI or outsource the jobs to sweatshop developers in Asia. It always has been.
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