Hold on there. Bob!
I suspect that there's still a lot of 'engineers' out there, someone has to make the machines that make the 'Chinese crap'!
Given a choice between working on a farm, in a foundry or down a coal mine, a career sat in a nice warm office with a keyboard and a mouse, working with technology you grew up with, don't seem too bad an option, add in the lack of mashed fingers - or worse - and then scrubbing the dirt off at the end of the shift..........
We only repaired those Mini's, Cortinta's, etc. and the rest of them 'cos we were skint, and they were somewhere near the forward edge of engineering, at the time.
In much the same way there's guys out there today that can change the battery on an IPhone 5 or whatever, on the kitchen table.
Think about the vast increase in reliability in small cars from the time of our youth. In 50 years time, when electronic equipment goes that far up the scale of dependability, there's bound to be another generation, on a forum like this, bemoaning the lack of mechanical skills in the young and their complete reliance on the domestic robot to change light bulbs and toilet rolls.
Butch making Whitworth nuts and you and Bruce buggering about with generators, mosfets and soldering irons, will be on the same plane as bodgers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights. and the other 'generalist' engineers. Glort, veg oil and solar panels won't be in it either.
Well, unless the apocalypses we suspect is coming, actually arrives, then I hope that bloke in the kitchen has downloaded this forums WOK onto his steam powered tablet!
Rant over, I'm off up the shed to change the exhaust on the Landy, before tomorrows snow storm sets in!
Cheers
Stef