I have a hope that many of today's engineers working at various companies will start realizing that instead of employers receiving tools to get them laid off, it is they, the engineers, who received the tools to compete with said employers and outcompete them.

If, and it's a big if, AI models really boost productivity by an order of magnitude (I personally, while being skeptical a year or two ago, am leaning towards this idea) then engineers have a chance to realize their ideas, improve current system design patterns and build successful companies, which will inevitably (hopefully) require hiring personnel to keep competing, bringing entire software engineering market to a newly balanced state.