Yeah, I notice a lot of the optimism is from people who have been in the field for decades. I'm newish to the field, half a decade out of undergrad. It definitely feels like almost all of what I learned has been (or will soon be) completely devalued. I'm sure this stuff feels a lot less threatening if you've had decades to earn a great salary and save a bunch of money. If money wasn't a concern I'd be thrilled about it too.
No, dont trust the supposed "staff engineer" types, Many had forgotten how to write code and now they can finally live the fantasy of being architects. So for them its like winning a jackpot. For people who could always write good code, the basics are still same, a good dev is still a good dev, and its even more important to be able to read & critique code.
