It’s worse than this…

Companies have built entire systems of such complexity and slop that they require AI just to do the maintenance. They have fired engineers thinking they can just replace them with AI.

Well when the prices rise, they have no choice but to stay locked in, paying whatever it takes just to keep their companies running. If they stop using AI, their workforce suddenly does not have capacity to do the work required because of the layoffs. And there are not enough people to hire because people are quickly turning away from software engineering as a career. What a disaster it will be.

Or, they have to hire people who still know what they're doing at a premium.

Be those people.