I started out in IT back in 1984 as a Cobol programmer , spent seven years doing that . Moved into Maiframe technical support role looking after , amoungst other things , the Burroughs DMSII codasyl database becuase I found coding boring. When it started to look like the era of Mainframes was beginning to come to and end I got involved in a project to link a DMSII database to a SQL server Database via a third party product and so got into SQL server. That was fifteen years ago .What I have noticed that thoughout the years however is this. Pundits have forever been anoouncing the death of one or more roles within IT , and with the exception of a few (like Punch operator/Data Prep ) this has rarely changed . During my Cobol training I was told that I would be the last generation of programmers and that 4GLs would permit end users to code their own systems. Its the same with computer operations , in my last job they still had 24x7 shift operations - the change from Mainframe to CMP servers didn't affect them. In my current job we still have a large team of sysadmins to look after the server farms .The truth be told the "death of the <insert IT specialist here" only if ever apply to the most basic aspects to a role or to roles tied to particular types of technology - there are even Cobol programming jobs out there becuase the cost of re-coding legacy systems often outweigh the benefits .