As AI advances toward expanded capabilities, knowledge workers are confronting not just job loss, but the deeper question of what makes them matter.
VENTURE BEAT:
Fortune published the story of a 42-year-old software engineer with a computer science degree whose purpose has unraveled. He had earned a six-figure salary writing code for a tech company. Then came the wave of generative AI. His job vanished, not by outsourcing or a corporate restructuring, but by algorithms that could code faster and cheaper. He subsequently applied for more than 800 software coding and engineering management jobs, but with no success. He now delivers for DoorDash and lives in a trailer, wondering what happened to a career he once believed was future proof.
This is not a story about economic misfortune alone. It is about identity collapse.
For decades, knowledge work has been the engine of self-worth and social mobility. It is where intelligence found validation, where contribution met compensation. To lose that, especially to a machine, is not just to lose a job. It is to lose a way of being in the world.
We are living through what might be called the Great Unmooring, or alternatively what the unemployed engineer referred to as “The Great Displacement.” This is a moment when the pillars that long defined human value are shifting underfoot.