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I don't know where you are, but when I hire mechanical engineers, I hire them from universities with accredited engineering programs. It's actually a legal requirement for the job in my jurisdiction. And if those engineers decide they want to become daycare teachers or knee surgeons, they do have to go back to university and re-train, even though they already learned how to think the first time.
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There are many fast-track teaching certification programs for people who already have a university degree https://tntpteachingfellows.org/

Healthcare is another growing field that's easy to get into with only 1- or 2-year certification programs for some positions.

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Is that true for healthcare careers that don't have abysmal quality of life? All of the nurses I've known are working 60 hour weeks, night shifts, etc.
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Pharmacy techs work regular hours.

Good pay, low barrier to entry, pleasant. Pick two.

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Did you graduate yesterday? Have you actually lived in the world?

My unmet needs are $2.5k rent and $2k childcare, per month. Then there's food, healthcare, car payments. There is pretty much zero wiggle room for us.

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Only $2.5K rent? That's like free these days. For what though. I rented a 4K sq ft house in Charlotte three years ago and now paying $3.5K for not a modern 2bdr in Miami proper.
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For sure! Still more money than I can fathom bringing in if software engineering went away tomorrow.

1300 sq ft house with a big yard for the toddler.

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I keep telling my 22y who graduated from a university last year to go to a trade school (HVAC/ electric, plumbing). Too late for me as these require apprenticeships in the US.

My HVAC contact in FL needs a $100 just to sniff the AC/boiler closet. That is, if I can get him to show up. I don't even know if he's licensed here, but he's definitely very experienced.

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1100 a month in Kansas City and $800 a month in Denver. Everybody wants to live on the coast.
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If you're unemployed, you won't need to pay 2 grand/month for someone else to watch your children, and you don't have to pay San Francisco rents if you're not working there.
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I don't think "just give up your existing community and move" is a viable option. That defeats the whole point since at that point the retraining isn't allowing you to maintain your quality of life.
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It is a viable option. "Quality of life" is a luxury and programmers no longer belong to the class that can afford it. Do what everyone else does and go wherever the jobs are and live at whatever quality the market decides that you deserve.
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San Francisco is where the jobs are, and dropping your entire social network on the floor at exactly the moment you need it the most to help you is not good advice.
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I think you are missing the point of the discussion. The idea behind "just retrain" rhetoric is effectively "new technology won't destroy people's quality of life because they can just retrain!". If quality of life isn't maintained, then there is no reason to retrain at all, people can just get a minimum wage job and live in poverty.
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The rhetoric was a lie. Capitalists lie. That new technology always creates a surplus of newer, better jobs and quality of life always improves for everyone was a lie. That you can "just retrain" and everything will remain the same was a lie.

Even if you "retrain" your quality of life will go down because the market value of your life will go down as automation and AI improve, unless you're a member of the capitalist class. Which, if you need to work for a living at all, you aren't. No matter what you do unless you're personally wealthy your quality of life will go down. That's just what an efficient market does to most people, and AI is going to make the market brutally efficient.

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I wonder how many sectors this will have to happen to until workers realize that nobody's safe. I was shocked to see journalists at major firms peddling the 'just learn to code' line a few years back, given how much their industry had contracted in the decades before.
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> just give up your existing community and move" is a viable option.

That’s been how humanity has always worked, human migration is probably the largest single driver of social change in human history

Millions of people migrate every year today, I’m not sure what you think the alternative is

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No, it isn't. This is an incredibly modern phenomenon. We see examples of peoples moving en masse throughout history, yes, but the idea that everyday individuals should expect to leave their community is an incredibly recent one. Such would have seemed monstrous to people even a few hundred years ago. Fun fact: Socrates wasn't actually sentenced to death, he was sentenced to death or exile, and chose death over having to leave his home behind.

> Millions of people migrate every year today

A just society that doesn't force them to.

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I'm interested in how you expect someone to attend school/retrain without childcare. You can't generally bring your kids to class with you.
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In some other countries family generally takes this role: grandparents look after them
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Your solution to childcare is permanent unemployment?

This is Denver rent actually, and increasingly most urban centers.

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People don't get a degree in "generic doing things people want". They generally get one focused on a particular field.

If someone's degree is in computer science, they're not going to be a good fit to be, say, an accountant or a nuclear engineer.

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This works if you're interested in running a business, but what well paying work doesn't require a degree or some kind of formal training certification?
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