It's not a matter of black and white, or good and bad, its more subtle than that.

I've talked to you about this before. When I started in my field, the boss would say, "I like your background in math and science, I can train you in air photo mapping". Or later another might say, "I like your science/math/airphoto background, I can easily teach you image processing/remote sensing". And my next boss might say, "Wow, you've got a great background in science and mapping, you can learn GIS and manage my shop full of GIS experts."

Now the bosses are thinking "I've got a shop full of idle workstations running ArcView 9.2 and I don't care what these new grads know as long as they can log on today and start generating product, because I haven't a clue what these guys do or what they need to know to do it".

We don't hire people and teach them a technology any more, we've reduced the technology to software that can be learned by rote, like touch typing. Andd they tech has a short shelf life, so only those people who know how to pick up new packages and versions quickly can survive.

Meanwhile, the maps come out of the plotters, they are gorgeous and have an air of efficiency about them, but no one in the office knows how to go out and field check them.

I built a great career because I had enough of a general background I could go easily from one related technology to another, building on the previous one. Nowadays we need specialists in software and databases, they don't need expertise in remote sensing or cartography. A guy can come in from accounting IT and quickly learn the mapping software. He really doesn't need to know latitude from longitude, that's "geek stuff".