I see a lot of this talk on HN

yet I don't see anyone question whether management will be just as excited to see that less work is needed and that it'd just result in layoffs

Oh, they would be, but the benefits of AI aren't evenly spread like peanut butter. I subscribe to the 'ai as amplifier' POV, so the fast get faster, and generally productive people don't get squeezed or the scrutiny the laggards do IME.

Contrast to remote work where the benefit was extended to all regardless of performance, thus becoming a large target for management to cut.

I think the talk about management & capital demanding ROI will be the inflection point to watch, as a downstream effect could be AI haves & have-nots, depending on open weight models' competitiveness and local capability relative to the SOTA models.