Centaurus;
Or those stalwarts with four stripes who practically have a fit if you suggest turning off the flight director in sunny CAVOK..
Yes, I hear that from F/O's I used to fly with - it always bothered me because I could tell people were losing basic skills. FWIW, I fully agree with Huck, above, because I know that these are outcomes of reduced skill levels.
Early on, I chose to be one of the other kind of skippers who insisted on hand-flying every chance I got, both on the 320 series and 340 series a/c and that my F/O's do the same when comfortable, and that I would be happy to do the a/p settings. I insisted on (and taught) use of manual thrust when appropriate, so the autothrust system was understood, (for some reason, there is a great fear of both disconnecting the a/t and actually how to do it without causing a mess or a runaway airplane - I've seen it). The goal was to teach relationships between the autothrust, flight director, autoflight and FMGC systems because it is impossible to learn from the AOM and sim time is difficult to come by.
The barebones training and abnormals-driven sim sessions never catered to how to fly the airplane and instead focussed on ECAM discipline, reading checklists, getting the more complex abnormals "comfortable", (EMER Elect Config, two hydraulic system failure, slat-flap jams, CATIII's etc). Manual thrust and hand flying especially with the f/d's off and raw ILS data was never taught but it was sometimes tested as were steep turns and stall recoveries. I hand-flew the 320 and 340 every leg I had until the company quietly but unmistakably indicated that hand-flying was only to be "encouraged", (meaning if anything happened, you were on the carpet) under very specific conditions which would be extremely benign to some posters here who have expressed opinions and who who see, like I do, the exceptional value of staying in touch with the airplane as opposed to "managing" the airplane through secondary "intellectual vice artistic" modes, (another thread...). The standard used when teaching was, if the candidate could, in all flight regimes, move from fully automated flight to fully manual flight and back again without the passengers "knowing", I felt there was sufficient understanding of the Airbus autoflight system to be safe. I have seen enough outcomes of misunderstanding autoflight regimes that I consider manual flight essential and not merely something to be practised when there isn't a bird in a clear-blue sky. This issue was raised almost two decades ago and still has not been addressed by the airlines nor by the regulator. A thorough balance between the two - automation & actual flying an airplane, is key, using both regimes but right now the balance is way too far towards automation and as such is becoming a self-fulfilling "prophecy". Automation can subtlely create a "veil" between crew and aircraft as, especially in the Airbus, the feedback loops (speed and sound, pressure on the stick, a/c speed and trim), are incomplete.
Don't mistake these expressions as eschewing automation and it's contributions to flight safety. Undoubtedly automation is safer, used appropriately and with comprehension. I fully embrace automatic flight - but, like the "MCPL panacea" that is fast becoming the new fad with airline managements, IATA and even ICAO, managements who do not fly regularly and bean-counters who figure automation can reduce costs and Operations departments who loath manual flight because of the "higher fuel costs", (heard it, been told), need to reassess what a pilot actually does and who can now rightly call themselves an aviator and who cannot.