It’s a different, less enjoyable, type of work in my opinion.
It's also why the opinions are so heated on this. There's many forms of management, and some play way better with the AI tools than others. Some people are doing the assembly line jobs and some are doing code ninja jobs. Some are actually doing engineering, and some are code monkeys who are paid the same range as the engineers and using the same tools.
Logging is absolutely less labor intensive since the invention of the motorized chainsaw and other heavy equipment. A look at farming and other construction jobs is probably similar to what will happen with SWE in the long-term. With better tools and access to information, a ton of people can DIY a majority of things. There will still be jobs for pros to build the skyscrapers and other non-DIY friendly things. But, what developers can charge and what people are willing to pay will most likely change due to some of these technologies.
I mean, if someone goes to Ikea but can't get it to build a working cabinet (with functioning and practical locks...), then perhaps the ability to do that is something to brag about.
If manual coding is a saw, using agentic AI coding is a table saw.
It can make some work faster but there are still things done better with a manual saw. And if you don't learn how to use it well you can lose some fingers.
The AI picks the wood, decides where and how to cut, and builds the table, and sometimes it decides the square table you told it to build has five legs. But you still call yourself a carpenter either way.
This is an elegant way of putting it. I like it