> Stay in touch until they do need you and say : you were right. That's the day you charge them a dear price for the service.
That assumes OP will still be in business if that day even happens. Odds are that cheap AI access will be around for longer than freelancers can remain solvent.
Brother, you voluntarily worked overtime without compensation because you "loved it" and thought you were already highly compensated. All this means is that your company took advantage of free labor and you missed out on being paid for your work. Whatever your compensation levels are, giving free labor to your employer is a foolish game. 60+ hours a week for years, come on...those projects are absolutely mismanaged if the work can’t be done without that much overtime.
So which industry was changed dramatically by your team working 60+ hours a week for years? If you we’re compensated for overtime you can thank unions for that, if you worked voluntarily overtime you were by definition taken advantage of.
> As for disposable code slingers? That’s been true for the last 30+ years.
The last 30 years saw massive growth in SWE salaries. That doesn’t happen if SWEs are disposable.
Working 60+ hours a week for years is nothing to brag about. It just means your projects were mismanaged, done poorly and you were absolutely taken advantage of. You also mentioned in another comment that you are disposable if you are "slinging code" 40+ hours a week.
> I think however that all that is needed to bridge the gap is some very simple feedback from an expert at the right time.
I don't think it's as simple as that. What will most likely happen is that the vibe coders will quickly eat up your time asking for validation and feedback if you are not careful. You are also now implicitly contributing to their project, which if it goes south, could come back to bite you. If the vibe coders are pushing code in the org, then they should become part of the formal review process like any other junior programmer.
They should also be forced to do daily stand-ups, sit in meetings and explain their code like the rest of us.
Perhaps US companies should invest more in their employees then? Advancement, promotions beyond %1-3% COLAs, career paths, etc would go along way to keep employees interested in seeing their employers succeed instead of jumping ship every couple of years. The would require some effort from the C-suite however and since they jump ship every few years as well, I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I suppose it's a cultural thing for Americans then too, given the current White House occupant? I don't know, maybe every culture just has their share of shitty people.
That is the bait and switch. The end goal is that you are out of the equation. Your perceived effectiveness at using AI as an exchange of labor diminishes over time to the point that you become irrelevant.
Force yourself to take time off work. You are human after all. Don’t feel guilty about sitting and doing nothing. Relaxation takes some time to set in, tell yourself you are just out of practice. The constantly online/being available culture we have isn’t sustainable.
That assumes OP will still be in business if that day even happens. Odds are that cheap AI access will be around for longer than freelancers can remain solvent.