I use LLMs as a staff engineer in 2026

I have been thinking about this for a while.

LLMs replacing humans, LLMs don't complain or unionize, yada yada. Now people are like "not by AI, _with_ AI" so what's stopping the companies replacing 200k/yr + token costs per SWE in the US with 40-50k/yr + token costs in India or Phillipines?

I've pretty much been losing my mind over posts on r/singularity or r/accelerate - people actively hating on any sort of criticism and being extremely hostile towards people that aren't fully in the AI camp.

Extremely disillusioned and actively thinking about finding a different livelihood.