AI Didn't Take Our Jobs

Lately, the sentence I hear most often is: "AI took our jobs." I understand the fear; we're living through a time when work is changing and some doors are getting narrower. But I don't agree. AI didn't take our jobs. If anything, it gave engineering the chance to focus on what it was always supposed to be about.

What is an engineer? Put simply, an engineer is someone who solves everyday problems, who designs, builds and thinks analytically. In short, a problem solver.

Not long ago, an engineer who wanted to solve even the simplest problem had to write code for hours. Between bugs, trouble setting up the environment and one distraction after another, they would often just say "oh, forget it" and give up. Today most of those obstacles are gone. So, to my fellow computer engineers who really want to solve problems and design new things: AI now does the grunt work. All you have to do is give engineering its due.

I've lived this myself. After seven years of backend development, I learned React, Next.js and Docker while building this site, and I put it live. A few years ago, this would have been an "oh, forget it" kind of project. But I was still the one deciding what was right and which code went to production. AI took on the grunt work; the engineering stayed with me.

So what about today's unemployment? I think most of what we're seeing in 2025–2026 comes from swings in the global economy and companies undoing the rapid hiring of previous years; AI is only one part of the picture. So don't say "engineering is dead." Engineering isn't dead. It's rising with AI.