IT is changing, here's how

I miss the mainframe and thin clients. I really do. I miss when IT workers were white collar workers, not the now-expected know everything from cabling to programming crap that has become the hallmark of current HR demands. It's one thing to be well rounded, but very, very few people know all of the "skills" expected these days. I know of very, very few people who are both competent systems administrators and yet stellar programmers.

I know my opinion on the above is largely in the minority of IT pros, but I really disdain how IT is shaping up. Nothing seems concrete like it used to. It's difficult to put what I mean into mere words, but those who have been in this industry across three decades like I have will understand, even if they don't necessarily agree. I miss when IT was "magic" to most people. I miss feeling like I was accomplishing something rather than putting out fires because the pointy heads are making yet another useless change because they saw it at some C-title conference. I miss the absolute rock-solid performance of mainframes. I miss being able to deploy a new diskless client in 30 seconds with NFS running on a Solaris E10K. I miss running FreeBSD on Netra 1Us that never went down. I miss never having to be around a Windows environment. IT is a mess. I loathe BYOD, BYOT. Just my opinion. Not bitter, just worried a bit.