I'm not sure that some common engineering problems now being solved doesn't just mean that we can now redistribute that workforce on other unsolved problems, or to build new products on-top of those solutions.
I'm not sure that some common engineering problems now being solved doesn't just mean that we can now redistribute that workforce on other unsolved problems, or to build new products on-top of those solutions.
Another thing that was commonly said over the 2000s period is that all software jobs would be quickly outsourced to India. That didn't happen either. Some big companies obviously tried that (and some still do) but a lot of them eventually realized that software wasn't something you could just specify and outsource to a team far away, with a different time zone, culture and language and expect to magically get working software as a result. In the meantime, I think that demand for software in India has also grown. I laughed at loud when in the early 2010s I received an email from an Indian recruitment agent offering me to come work in India.