Most (e.g. [1]) don't think of their job as being automated because most don't understand how it will happen. The issue is we only have the present way to think

Most (e.g. [1]) don't think of their job as being automated because most don't understand how it will happen. The issue is we only have the present way to think about how the future will work. The future will likely eliminate a lot of mundane engineering jobs (e.g. CRUD apps) with tools that provide automation (learned or programmed) and more intuitive interfaces for the layman. Not all work can be automated, but those are the edge cases. The focus is to eliminate most work, by building smarter and more niche services. For example, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, et al have reduced the number of jobs for CMS and ecommerce developers. Zapier and IFTTT have reduced the number of integration jobs. The Grid was an experiment in creating whole websites automatically (most regard it as a failure, but the tech will likely catch up). There's research into using ML to identify and correct bugs in code. These are the low hanging fruit that will erode away at the jobs easiest to automate, leaving behind more niche work. It's hard to imagine less work for engineers in the future because there's so much work to go around right now. That's likely the case presently because there's so many industries where manual labor can be eliminated, creating lots of new labor for engineers. Whole industries may be disrupted until corporations with automation emerge and take over. We'll likely see engineering work keep rising until there isn't as much left to automate and engineering supply catches up, at which point we'll hit "peak software engineering." There will be engineers in the future just like there will be medical professionals in the future, but they'll probably be doing a different job and there will be a lot less work to go around. I like to think of that line of work as "escalation jobs," where when the machine fails, it goes to the human. Other work will likely get more and more scientific, theoretical and research-oriented. 1. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/24/americans-think-robots-will-take-everyone-elses-jobs-but-not-theirs.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/24/americans-think-robots-will-t...