The market was heading for saturation anyway with more and more people getting into it not for interest but job prospects.

That was already a common thing 30 years ago.

That's the 10-20 year cycle always, though. The .com crash led to a major downgrading in the status of "tech" people for a few years, and then a slow recovery til it was insane again.

However, I'm not eager to be living through this again. It feels very spring/summer 2002 to me right now. That was the lowest point for the local market back then.

I don't think this latest contraction has much to do with AI though. It's more about higher interest rates, recessionary economy, trade wars, etc etc.

I think you'll find that the ability to ask the right questions is still as highly valuable as the previous version of things.

In most countries, even for highly skilled workers, this is the norm (i.e. most countries outside of the US). I know some very good engineers (e.g. dealing with large revenues (1bil plus) owning core systems) on this kind of money. Not everyone gets the lucky break.

At least for many on this forum you got a chance to earn good money while the sun was shining. AI threatens even the people that didn't.

Regardless of whether $110k is good money (it is basically everywhere except a few metro areas) your salary cap will be whatever the models can deliver in the same time as you. It follows you want to be good at managing models (ideally multiple dozen) in your area of expertise.