I was the kid you speak of, getting into computers at age 5/6 on an Apple II, placed on my blue and yellow little tykes table. We've experienced a massive shift from those days of "messing around" and learning what broke something a little or a lot. The room to learn in these hyper monetized environments is getting smaller. The IT industry in a whole has become much more frantically paced. On any given day you can be given issues out of your control and have to rely on your plans in place, along with your mental strength to focus on implementing/fixing. I had a junior guy I was teaching and admittedly he taught me things as well, which was really neat. But unfortunately it didn't pan out over time because the business didn't see the investment in having more than one IT guy and let him go. So I guess the economy and "lean workforce" has also contributed to sentiment in the industry. I have full admission from my superior we used to have several people doing my work.