I once met a consultant whose job was to find places for affluent children in the best nurseries and schools. One client on her list had mapped out his son’s life with precision. The boy would attend Cambridge university before embarking on a career in investment banking at Deutsche Bank. The child was six months old.

The father’s hothouse ambition seemed absurd when I first heard about it. Who looks at their baby’s chubby face, hears their gurgling laughter and thinks “nascent spreadsheet monkey”? A year on, it seems even more ludicrous. Deutsche, after all, is cutting 9,000 jobs.

Yet, I confess to premature thoughts about my own son’s future career. When he started school this term I experienced a frisson of panic as he set his Start-rite feet on the institutional conveyor belt. My job is to write about work and careers, and I am assailed by daily predictions of widespread automation and mass unemployment.