[mitthrowaway2]

Thanks for the warm feedback!

Maybe another interesting case would be secretaries. It used to be very common that even middle management positions at small to medium companies would have personal human secretaries and assistants, but now they're very rare. Maybe some senior executives at large corporations and government agencies still have them, but I have never met one in North America who does.

Below that level it's become the standard that people do their own typing, manage their own appointments and answer their own emails. I think that's mainly because computers made it easy and automated enough that it doesn't take a full time staffer, and computer literacy got widespread enough that anyone could do it themselves without specialized skills.

So if programming got easy enough that you don't need programmers to do the work, then perhaps we could see the profession hollow out. Alternatively we could run out of demand for software but that seems less likely!

(a related article: https://archive.is/cAKmu )