The last 10 on a B733 with everything and I feel my management of flight is far superior than the good old days of "stick and rudder". I make better decisions and use less fuel with help from the automatics. Understanding what the aircraft is capable of and how to best manage the autoflight to achieve that is the key.
The tragedy is you become so reliant on the automatic "goodies" that you gradually lose the confidence and skills required to actually fly the aeroplane. The more you lose that confidence the more you rely on the automatics even for the most basic manoeuvres until finally you are led to believe in your own mind that manipulative skills are not only not applicable to flying jet transports but indeed it is potentially dangerous to attempt hand flying.
In the simulator we frequently observe experienced captains and cadet first officers make an absolutely embarrassing hash of a straight forward IMC raw data hand flown ILS. Few are able to touch down with no drift on a crosswind landing. But watch them "monitor" the automatics on a Cat 3 and they are in their element.
It is the wonderful reliability of automatics that has made airline flying safer over the years - not the skill of the crews per se. CFIT has been overtaken by Loss of Control as the major cause of accidents in the past few years and this is entirely because manipulative skills have been eroded by policies that ensure automatics are to be engaged at the earliest opportunity after lift off and left engaged until that last few seconds before touch down. Even simulator sessions are primarily an automatics exercise with very little time allotted to ensure excellent manipulative skills. And so the vicious circle is maintained.
If you believe that an airline pilot should be equally skilful at automatic flight and at manual flight, then think again. Because very rarely do we see this in the simulator and certainly hardly ever in the air.