I was catching an Uber back home from the airport after a business trip this year when my 50-ish year old driver shared a shocking tale. He was a successful computer programmer for 7 years. He worked at a good company doing some very interesting work at a scientific company. His parents got ill, so he took a year off to care for them before they passed. When he tried to get back into programming, there were no jobs. He literally sent out hundreds and hundreds of resumes and applications to not get a single callback. He told me about cool coding projects he was working 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 recently got out of game development because the industry was pretty toxic (something I can confirm) and was also imploding due to the worst layoffs seen in decades. She is now training to become a physical therapist. She’ll make half what she did before, but is already happier and 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. There was an amazing amount of over-hiring during Covid that is now being unwound. But it is clear that is is impacting people – especially entry level workers that can’t even get in and people over 50. My Uber driver’s story isn’t the only one – and workers in Europe are seeing the same patterns – even outside of software.
Jacqueline Bowman consistently got paid freelance writing work (marketing/journalism) every day for years. 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 needing to take even more time due to fact-checking everything the AI drafts were generating. 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 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 youth 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. Another 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 already affecting your field.