I was catching an Uber back home from the airport after a business trip when my 50 year old drive shared a shocking tale. He was a computer programmer for 7 years. His parents got ill so he took a year to care for them before they passed. When he tried to get back in, there were no jobs. He literally sent out hundreds and hundreds of resumes and applications to not get a single callback. He talked about cool coding projects he worked on in his spare time and projects he did for work. But it didn’t matter – he now has had to drive uber the last year to even make ends meet. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get back into computer programming again.

Another friend of mine got out of game development because the industry had become so toxic as well as suffering huge layoffs. She has turned to becoming a physical therapist. She’ll make half what she did before, but already feels she is doing more good for the world than game programming ever did.

The change is dramatic and it’s real. Everything can’t be blamed on AI, but it is becoming more and more clear that is is impacting people – especially entry level workers that can’t even get in. My Uber driver’s story isn’t the only one – and workers in Europe are seeing the same patterns.

Jacqueline Bowman consistently go writing work (marketing/journalism) and writing every day for paid freelance work. In 2024, that all started to dry up as more and more of her clients started talking about AI. Soon she was reduced to editing work for about half the pay – despite taking even more time due to fact-checking everything. By Jan 2025, she could no longer pay her bills. She’s now switching to psychology and hoping it will be more AI proof.

Janet Feenstra was a freelance academic editor in 2013 – but now turned baker in Malmö, Sweden at 52 years old. She realized the writing on the wall when she saw AI could do the kind of english language editing she was doing for non-native speakers. She had to give up her home, retrain for a year, and now makes much less and lives in a small flat.

Richard was a occupational health and safety professional that worked his way up the career ladder for 15 years. He saw the writing on the wall after seeing more and more policies and safety systems done by AI. He sees need for a few “highly specialised managers. The rest of it’s probably going to go.” He jumped ship and is becoming an electrical engineer. He also took ‘a huge cut’ financially.

Even students and young are starting to switch paths. Paola Adeitan was studying law, but realize friends of hers were struggling to find entry jobs caused by the rise of AI use in law firms. A 23 year old left his pursuit of a geography degree for a trades job.

2023 report on the impact of AI on jobs and training in the UK by the Department for Education outlined that many clerical, finance, law, and business management jobs are very vulnerable to AI. The most significant AI-caused declines in employment and wages will be in jobs like software engineering and management consultancy, according to a King’s College London study.

What comes next is going to be very disruptive – very much like the revolution of the internet. Who comes out the winners is rarely who went into it that way. It’s good advice to pay very close attention to what the trends are in your industry – because AI is likely about to affect them very soon too.