Tinfoil hat thoroughly fixed upon my head, but a part of me kind of thinks that this might have been a long-game from big tech in the same vein as Grapes of Wrath.

Software engineers make a lot of money, at least historically because of supply/demand mechanics. By suddenly and continuously flooding the market with lots and lots of software engineers, you effectively can bring down wages, since if people are unemployed long enough they're likely to take a lower salary.

The FAGMAN companies got caught colluding to depress wages by avoiding hiring people already employed by the others, so they learned to accomplish the same thing without writing it down by having these periodic huge layoffs across the entire industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

They (the industry) have always wanted to find a way to do this. Tools like Rational Rose and Visual Basic were touted as being able to do this. Sending work overseas is another way. AI is just the next in line.

I don't know what the overall answer is, but I would say that if you have high demand skills, you can still earn a living.

Only works if employees can't found something new. Which might be the case right now.

Really, it feels like we're in a quiet depression.

To me it does not seem like any bigger conspiracy than people always wanted to pay less and earn more at the same time.