Earlier quoted context omitted.
>most people are not experiencing career-ending levels of performance from LLMs. You don't have to. Experiencing increased competition for jobs or lower pay for the same job (because less devs are needed for the same level of output) is just as bad. Experiencing increased competition for jobs or lower pay for the same job (because the AI industry imploded and the devs from that industry are now in the market) is just…
Third possibility negates the first two. Also, did VB6 put anyone out of work?
Asking whether you would like to work with a cowboy coded VB6 for low pay is a better one. The companies that have less cowboy coded apps are the companies everyone wants to work at. The more companies with cowboy coded apps, the harder it gets to get a job at a company with minimal cowboys imo.
VB6 apps haven't disappeared anymore than Cobol systems have.
"Third possibility negates the first two." It doesn't. Those 3 things don't need to all happen. Any of them alone is enough to significantly worsen the pay or quality of life of your average dev. And the 3 things don't even need to happen at the same time anyway.