If you are a regular user of PostGIS, you might know of Paul Ramsey and his Clever Elephant blog. His latest post, Esri and Winning, discusses a talk he gave at a regional Canadian GIS conference in Manitoba. His presentation might be an interesting read, though it may take a while. What caused a stir were statements that employee dependence on a set of GUI-driven tools is causing downward pressure on wages.
It might be worth comparing Paul Ramsey’s statements with United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook (see Geographers). In a nutshell, we all do a wide variety of tasks, but we’d all like to think the people who expand their skills will have greater opportunities.
My take? Remember that Esri is also a major contributor to open source. Learning some great new stuff is as easy as a visit to developers.arcgis.com/.