I too had the "ok, I better dive in", rather than ducking out epiphany. Similar story, 37 years of IT, many roles, top performer, yada yada yada. I bought a MacBook pro 3 weeks ago(all the cool kids are doing it). I've been developing various automated audit and compliance based projects with Claude and openai. Having been a developer for perhaps 20 of those years, I find this new experience amazing.

I've been leveraging a lay audience (one of my teams) to deep dive requirements, wants etc.

Anyway, I'm so torn. I like these people, I hate to see them lose their jobs. I'll retire soon, I want to find a better, "feel good role" than my current, yet very lucrative situation.

I want to leverage my years of good software design for good. Where, for who?

--old lost IT guy in FL

And I hear "why am I helping you code me out of a job". I scare them with "if you help, you'll stay", assuming they get that what I really mean is "if you duck away, bury you're head in the sand, you'll be out"