I'm from the same era, how did I avoid it? I never knew just one language, for starters. Unlike the author's father, I never waited around for someone else to train me. I bought a book and wrote throw-away projects in Delphi, VB, or whatever. FoxPro (a primary source of my income for a period) died a slow death? Good thing I know .NET (granted, working on the MSFT VS team kind of helped with that). IOW, I didn't sit around and wait for $IT (for various values of whatever we're waiting for) to come to me or be served to me.
So why doesn't everyone else do that? Because I wasn't learning Delphi with an eye on a job, it just looked cool and I thought it might at some point come in handy. People that got into this field for the money don't do that. They see the hands on the clock go to 5:01 and don't think about computers until 8:59 the next day, at least that's my guess. Would I be a lawyer for twice what I make currently? Oh, hell, no. No amount of money can make up for half my waking hours spent doing something that doesn't look like fun. Don't go into a computer-related field just because of the money, either.