It's illusory to think that we have a choice. It's hard to avoid becoming obsolete over a long timespan.
I don't think it's "hard" per se, but it does require intentional effort. I can also see how, with a difficult work schedule, or family commitments, it may become hard or even impossible to carve out the time.
I'm about 23 years into this journey, and although I still remember plenty of esoteric trivia that was useful programming in the 90's, and is useless now, there still appears to be room to learn new things every day
>Everybody has to do everything.
Everybody needs to have _at least some degree of familiarity_ with everything, yes. But that has always been the case. There is not and there never has been a job posting for someone to design algorithms and do nothing else, nor to deploy HTTP servers and nothing else.
I expect that if you pick any part of any software/hardware stack, anyone with a reasonable amount of experience would be able to give real-world examples where familiarity with several (and sometimes all) other parts of that stack are not only beneficial but sometimes necessary. I also expect that illustrations would be able to found from any point in the history of computing, up to and including now.
Next switch is likely starting a business.
37 y.o., still not tired of this!
I can see how someone could get bitter if they stayed in the same role/position most of their career, but in my experience this has tended to be people with a negative outlook/attitude/chip on shoulder in general... It really is what you make of it, people are people wherever you go, some are dicks, some are not.
Just accept the reality of the game and deal with it.
You don't need to spread your aura of doom everywhere you go.