I believe what all the self aggrandizing by the seats of their pants aces forget is that most shiny new jets fly out of and into airports where RNP/PRNAV requirements dictate use of the automatics. To fly manually on these SIDs and STARs is to invite possible deviations which can be " career stalling " for some.
Enough of all these great stories of heroics...the world is changing rapidly and like it or not the automatics will rule the future pilot's life. I love flying manually and I am lucky to have flights into airports where RNAV/PRNAV procedures are not required.
The challenge is to be totally proficient in correcting all the anomalies with the automatics entirely or partially. The supreme rule is never ever getting into situations where you have to use your super self declared " acy profiency " to manually get out of situations where you have gotten the automatics into. In my years of training pilots I have seen proud " old aces " get the automatics into ****ty situations and then proudly clicking them off to fly manually, mostly to an untidy end. Their pride.....they didn't crash despite the " failed automatics ". Actually there was absolutely nothing wrong with the automatics in those instances; the problem was the self declared aces did not understand the proper use of the automatics and misuse the functions.
This is not to say that pilots need not maintain their proficiency in flying manually. We have to strike a balance and the world is not going to change just to please those who think peddling the modern contraptions old fashion way is the be all and end all.