I'm with you Doug, I still think it's a decent enough job but that's not the issue. My question is will this be a good career until I retire and on that I'm still deciding. I'd need to bail pretty soon to catch up in a more interesting field of work but it is very tempting.
I call BS on the idea that airliners will never fly on automation, flying at all was once "impossible". Plus, and this is just a thought, what does 99% of all NTSB reports conclude? That's right, pilot error. We may have a fantabulous brain that can sort out situations that a machine couldn't, but had the machine been in charge to begin with the problem might not have occurred. We assume we're indispensable because we think of it as taking the current system and simply yanking the crew out of it. Of course that wouldn't work. But if you designed the whole aparatus from gate to gate to function with as few people as possible then you could probably get rid of us with enough fail-safes and technology.
A matter of time.