I've been flying for over 25 years, and I'd say that the quality of hands-on training we receive now (at least in my company) exceeds what I've known at any previous stage of my flying career. When I started, it's true that you would fly the aeroplane round an IR route - good instrument flying practice, sure - and you didn't have beta targets, TCAS and stuff. But literally the only surprise in the first eight years or so of getting my licence signed was which engine was going to fail, and whether you would say, "At this point, I'd consider a relight" or not ("yeah, that's fine, you can assume it doesn't relight. Now get on with the single engine ILS.")
In my last sim, in addition to the upset recovery training that has been mandated since AF447 was digested, the trainer gave me a, "You're on fire, put it on the ground as fast as you can", along with a separate complete failure of engine instruments (with engine failure). In the last few years, I've also had sim practice handling the aircraft with double engine failures (to land), loss of flight instruments, loss of autopilot on go-around, TCAS Climb at performance ceiling into upset recovery, stall recovery, approaches with manual thrust and flight directors off, circling approaches, circling approaches with engine failures ...
On top of that the Evidence Based Training framework means that pilots are being taught not to do procedures to handle specific failures, but being given the tools to manage any failure effectively.
Us "old pilots" are always likely to be hmphy about the inferior skills of pilots these days. But if I'm honest with myself, not only are the "youngsters" up to speed with flight path management manually, they are also well prepared with other skills. And that's great, as far as I'm concerned. I have nothing to prove. But I want to know that whoever I'm with will work with me to dig us out of whatever hole we end up in. It's not a competition.