After reading the insteresting posts on this thread, I sit with a feeling of being among "old" people, who are talking about the good old days.
Time changes, and so do airplanes, and which skills are needed.
We are not in 1930 doing the mailrun, using basic stick and rudder. Or in 1950 doing transatlantic flights, using celestrial navigation.
The skills needed today are much more of a "management" type, and not so much "hands on". All professional pilots are fully capable of as much manually flying as needed for todays flying.