Two-Edged Sword
Economic woes may mean the now over-paid guru gets the axe, leaving the dime-a-dozen noobs left to figure things out. To the bean-counters, two 40K new-hirers is better than one 80K Zen Master.To them, IT workers are replaceable minions, while managers and execs get to count on such subjective concepts as intrinsic value of knowledge and experience.
Case in point, my company found it cheaper to migrate a system to a brand-new platform, rather than to keep maintaining the old one and the only guy left who knew how to fix it. Being a very, very expensive core business system kept him employeed for over 30 years, then all of a sudden, that couldn't save him anymore. (He was 58.)
