You just described my situation and the way I work.
Work hard when you join, get status, show that you get shit done and have a fast turn-around. Your mission should be to make everyone happy. That way, when you lose interest in the job you will be able to slack and still get raises and go up the ladder. Bosses will act exactly as you said, by giving you freedom in hopes that you will spend that time working (which you are not). Sometimes when they really need/want something done they will micromanage, but basically they won't fire you because they know how productive you can be and desperately want to harvest your brain power.
Companies and girls are exactly the same. Everything is predetermined by the first three months (or less) you spend with them.
Exactly my feeling. Although I can't blame someone for overestimating the impact of automation on his jobs and preparing for it. Those who underestimate AIs will pay a hefty price.
Anyway, I don't think the "when" is really interesting to think about, especially when it's an arbitrary date. I prefer to ponder on much more significant and inevitable events/thresholds such as when AIs will surpass humans in every aspect. In my opinion, as long as AIs are inferior to humans in terms of intelligence, there will be jobs for most people, but past this point the concept of "work" is not event relevant anymore. And don't tell me "people will always need interaction with other people". That's clearly underestimating the capacity of future generations to identify with highly intelligent and sentient robots.
him: you're coding netflix, which db you use?
you: [insert any relational db name here]
him: but what if you have a gazillion users?
you: ok ok, i'll use mongodb (sigh)