Well, I was going to say something about this op-ed when I read it two nights ago, but Mike beat me to it.
My favorite quote from the article:
Stop whining. Stop waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Take charge of your own jobs, your own career and your own future. No one else is going to do it for you.
Rule #1: Being a commodity is not a good thing. A good test for this: is the work you are doing labor-intensive and reproducible? If you answered yes and yes, don't be surprised if you don't have a job sometime in the future.
As much as I hate to say it, development is clearly approaching commoditization. Sure, there is still a good deal of skill and experience involved, but these are gradually become less and less important. We have patterns and best practices to guide us and tools that do much of the heavy lifting. And, let's be honest here - most development, especially in the corporate world, isn't really ground-breaking, but rather "more of the same" from a technical perspective.
That is not to say there won't be any development jobs - quite the contrary - but it does mean that we may eventually have high-tech equivalent of the assembly line.
I have always considered myself a "generalist". Curiously, this has some negative connotations. I guess my definition of generalist is different than others' definition: I think a generalist is one who can do anything well, not someone who can't do anything well. Maybe it's my liberal arts education, but I feel the most important skill is the ability to learn. Technology is changing and if you fear change then you're in the wrong industry.
This also touches on very common career advice: create a niche. You should absolutely try to do something better than anyone else - creating a domain of expertise where you clearly add value - but there are good ways to create a niche and bad ways to do so.
Too often this comfort zone simply becomes an excuse to stop learning. Just because you're good at one thing doesn't mean you can't - and shouldn't - do something else if the opportunity presents itself. In the long run, you will be a better technologist with a more well-rounded view of the world.
As Mike said:
After all, wasn't it in elementary school we learned the ostrich sticks its head in the sand to hide? And haven't you, like me, always been amused by how the ostrich can be so stupid?
Today, often more value is realized by applying increasingly mature technologies in creative ways than by coming up with new concepts and technologies.
Another common fallacy: making yourself a bottleneck is not making yourself indispensable. Rather, it accomplishes the exact opposite. What's the first thing you do when you want to optimize a process? That's right - eliminate bottlenecks.