I'm just watching and waiting and clinging on...
As an old grey beard - 57 in January - I'm waiting for the inevitable.
I work for a large corporate - one of those massive corporates hardly anyone has heard of, 36,000 employees and offices in 40 countries.
Amazingly, we're still WFH permanently with just a guideline to meet at least twice a month at the office - very few do.
The company recently sold a building they own in my region of the world and rented a smaller office space.
In a way this makes WFH seem more permanent.
However, there's two other threats.
The company I work for is very tech driven and has already released numerous AI driven products to bolster it's digital offerings, however, AI is still a threat.
The main threat is what we at the office jokingly refer to as Chenn-AI.
No criticism meant for my fellow Indian colleagues - they are lovely people, hard working and great developers.
The problem is my company has decided that 90% of tech hires can only be from candidates in India - mostly Chennai and Bangalore.
Despite the fact it has offices in 40 countries it has become mandatory that we backfill roles with candidates from India.
It's a no-brainer for the corporate - you can hire 4 Indian software engineers for the same price as a European engineer and probably 5 for the same as a US engineer.
It's a WAY bigger threat than AI right now.
Yeah, I know this has been an issue for some time, but it was generally for less senior roles.
The call centre thing for example.
Now it's reached Senior engineer level.
Oddly, the corporate I work for isn't recruiting from India for management roles - go figure!
The writing is on the wall for me.
I count myself lucky I'm approaching retirement because from where I'm sitting, the gravy train days for software engineers are drawing to a close in the developed world.
It was inevitable I guess - we all basked in the glory of a seemingly never ending stream of high paid work, patting ourselves on the back for having chosen a career which paid highly.
For many of us, WFH was a thing before the pandemic. If you worked for a forward thinking company, 3 days at the office and 2 at home was normal.
All of this lovely stuff is ending - either get on the AI wagon and help train AI to replace you or get on the Management wagon and try to claw your way to a position high enough to escape being replaced by cheaper labour or AI.
Or change career and become a tradesman - sparky, plumber etc.