Early in my career I was told the story of the tall thin man and the short fat man.
The tall thin man gains a lot of money and respect in one field as an expert but his scope is very narrow. Expertise often comes from 10000 Gladwell hours. Tectonic changes in technology engender him at risk of being unemployed.
The short fat man is a "jack of all trades", knows a little bit of everything and has a feel of what ties them together. He will never be as respected or paid as an expert but changes in technology (both fast and slow) rarely affect him. He will always have a lower paid job.
I chose to be the short fat man (even though physiologically I was tall and thin in my 20s) because I wanted to be always employed circa 1998. Little did I know then that I would become the type who prefers long breaks from work and has an OCD for "perfect understanding".
I always expected the COBOL crowd (like me) to lose their jobs after Y2K and/or Java ... that didn't happen. Never underestimate the gravitational pull that legacy systems exert on the status quo and the CFO.
Depreciation is an amortizable cost and corporate systems don't read motivational bullshit books. Evolution almost always wins over revolution. We notice the reverse because it is so rare.
