I spent a reasonable number the years in airlines that recruited straight out of GA and it was always the pilots without a proper grasp of the IFR environment that scrubbed out of training, or if lucky they battled on as 'strugglers'.
I've worked for airlines that have operated pistons (Chieftains) and later turbines. The same is true for both, IFR was the prime concern and excess capacity. In both I've seen pilots that treated the engines well and those that were oblivious to the needs of either. You can move a Chieftains throttle through its range without doing really any damage, it will govern its maximum power limits and unless you really screw up the leaning process you are pretty safe with basic knowledge. The whole 1" per minute cooldown thing was unnecessary and smooth, regulated movement of the throttle was all that was required. Fly in ice, meh, they keep going. Ham fisted with the throttles, it will keep going. Flood it or stuff up the start, it just wont start (worst case you start a fire). Taking one into dirt/mud/gravel is not going to harm the engine to any great degree. The main issue is leaning properly and long term temperature management. Make sure the red lever is where it should be for particular flight phases and you cant go very wrong.
Move onto the turbines and the same is mostly true, except, generally in most you can easily overtemp them and do lasting damage if you stuff the start, push the levers too far forward, push them forward too fast, pull the props back too fast (turboprops), do something silly with up-scheduling sequences and so on. Pulling back levers suddenly can cause compressor stalls and that can very quickly lead to blade ejection. Ice ingestion can seriously damage inlets and compressors. Sucking a bird or other large fod into the compressor will damage stuff, so off roading through dirt/dust gravel whatever is going to seriously reduce your compressor life. So lots of things there that a pilot can stuff up and do some pretty costly damage, that might not come up on that flight, but the operator will pay for.
Which would I rather have an engine failure in a twin? The turbine of course, because if they are healthy they will continue along at high power, with more than enough performance generally to continue flight and return to land. But that's probably more to do with certification standards of the types I fly rather than piston vs turbine. But to be fair, some piston light twins can fly very well on one engine, depends on the excess power available and conditions on the day.