I agree with you it isnt guaranteed to be inevitable, and also agree there have been plenty of journeys which were on a trajectory only to fall off.
That said, IMHO it is inevitable. My personal (dismal) view is that businesses see engineering as a huge cost center to be broken up and it will play out just like manufacturing -- decimated without regard to the human cost. The profit motive and cost savings are just too great to not try. It is a very specific line item so cost/savings attribution is visible and already tracked. Finally, a good % of the industry has been staffed up with under-trained workers (e.g., express bootcamp) who arent working on abstraction, etc -- they are doing basic CRUD work.
> businesses see engineering as a huge cost center to be [...] decimated without regard to the human cost
Most cost centers in the past were decimated in order to make progress: from horse-drawn carriages to cars and trucks, from mining pickaxes to mining machines, from laundry at the river to clothes washing machines, etc. Is engineering a particularly unique endeavor that needs to be saved from automation?
That said, IMHO it is inevitable. My personal (dismal) view is that businesses see engineering as a huge cost center to be broken up and it will play out just like manufacturing -- decimated without regard to the human cost. The profit motive and cost savings are just too great to not try. It is a very specific line item so cost/savings attribution is visible and already tracked. Finally, a good % of the industry has been staffed up with under-trained workers (e.g., express bootcamp) who arent working on abstraction, etc -- they are doing basic CRUD work.