[xondono]

I find that very unlikely. I think the result will be similar to what has happened to the electronics industry.

For those who aren’t aware, PCB design used to be an automated task, done by software with minor tweaks. The thing is, complexity had a positive payoff, so soon we had trained technicians doing layout. Right now most PCB layout require so much technical knowledge most people working in layout are engineers with masters degree.

Of course there’s also a lot of cheap electronics where complexity doesn’t payoff and cutting development cost it’s what matters, but it’s not most of the market.

As long as you keep learning and improving, you are likely to see an increase of demand, not a decrease, although the job will be quite different.

[rjsw]

I had to help debug an autorouted PCB about 20 years ago, the traces between the CPU and SDRAM went three times round the board.

[testermelon]

Now that you mention it. I have a Masters in electronics, and I did a lot of layouting in the last 3 years. Not that big or complicated, but it is becoming a significant portion of my engineering time. It is perceived to be cheaper to just do the layouting in house because our system is small and benefit from fast iteration.