I do not intend here to be a fearmonger, not in the literal sense, but I do intend to plainly say that there is a reason why people who seem remarkably uninformed in programming of all sorts are successfully flooding into the market and displacing people who know how to do the same job better and faster.   Therefore, if you are (of course...) such a person, actually on either side of that fence, you have a selling job to do.   Labor cost is the number-one component of any white-collar type operation, so you have to be able to argue the case that, even though you “cost more,” you cost less.   Meanwhile, if you are on the other side of that equation, you have a far more difficult problem:   having displaced yourself or been displaced thousands of miles from home, you have been dumped into a situation where you might not be expected to succeed because you are, well, interchangeable.   I have had the opportunity to talk with a lot of very smart men and women who are in that situation right now.

Being a student of history as an avocation, I find eerie but familiar parallels with the past in today’s labor relations in this professional-market segment.

Being a student of history as an avocation, I find eerie but familiar parallels with the past in today’s labor relations in this professional-market segment.

I don't see it :/

Even if we disregard your erroneous Eli Whitney reference, and guess correctly you were talking about Samuel Colt, the parallel doesn't hold. Gunsmiths were very rare, much much rarer than blacksmith/whitesmith/goldsmith and they catered to the rich. What Samuel Colt did was open-up new markets, he didn't diminish or devalue gunsmiths -- the rich still kept buying their lavish custom guns, lavish custom guns which Samuel Colt wasn't selling because he made money by selling to armies in bulk