And the earth is how many years old?
I'm not saying climate change isn't happening, just that your example isn't a good one given the limited sample set that is your life. If we are being honest, even a few thousand years of recorded history isn't much to go on given the age of the planet. Climate change has happened before, it will happen again. Some of it will be because of us, some will not.

I apply this same thinking to people who I (help) interview for the various teams I have worked on. Give me people who are willing to learn (and have shown that ability) and a good fit for the team; choosing based on skills alone is waaaaay too risky.

Over the last 4 years I've managed a rather good run of moving up to bigger/better positions. In each case I have had to answer the "what would it take to keep you here" question and in each case I said that I wasn't interested in renegotiating. Upping my pay or asking for more of "X" changes the relationship in a way that cannot ever be undone, and odds are it doesn't solve the underlying problem anyway. More money for you doesn't solve the bad manager / small budget / long commute problem and any/all of those things will wear on you over time. Find someplace you like with a low idiot and/or psycopath to normal person ratio, remember to keep your skills current, and work to increase your value to the company just because it can't hurt.

Sorry but this is just another example of a company who has no idea how to properly terminate or control access. First, those service and/or other random accounts should not have the ability to remotely access systems in the first place, let alone domain admin access. Second, thanks to the miracle of PowerCLI/etc changing local passwords across all hosts (VMware in this case since it is the focus of the story) is dead simple, free, and fast. Third, if you are going to term someone with admin access you cut off their access BEFORE you tell them.
Yes changing service account passwords is difficult but it is your job as an IT staffer to let management know that downtime will be required if someone with full admin access is let go. I've been through that exercise multiple times and it took a small team of us to get it done. Once you have done it once though you know what to expect and can accurately predict how long it will take moving forward. Not only that, you can use the exercise to determine what changes to make that will simplify the process moving forward (such as less accounts with remote access rights).

Damn dude you nailed it; I just forwarded this to someone I worked with. My company does global health work in primarily third world areas. Almost a year ago the company brought in someone from a completely different industry (tobacco) as our CIO and he is trying to shoehorn in every idea from his previous job into our IT department. Let's just say it isn't working and those of us who (in the past) gladly spent far beyond 40 hours a week helping the company design/implement a stable IT infrastructure because we were proud of the mission of the company are watching these "new" ideas threaten it all and our enthusiasm/energy levels drop like a rock (sorry for the long sentence).

The article is fairly accurate, as is your reply.
If you are working your way up the tech ladder you should really be living as transient a lifestyle as is possible. This means renting rather than buying a home, not buying roomfulls of furniture (harder to move all of your stuff), limiting debt, etc.
If you are able to be mobile and local opportunities are limited you will always have options elsewhere. I am fortunate that I live in an area that is still growing (Raleigh, NC) so I still have plenty of opportunities locally; I would be in trouble if I had to move right now (house needs work, would need to hire a mover, would probably lose a little money, etc). I know some guys who are stuck in areas like Boston, NYC, Michigan (multiple cities), etc who can't sell their house (not only is no one buying, they owe more than it is worth) which means they can't afford to move at the moment. If I could get them down here I know of multiple jobs they could get but they just can't make a move.

It is, next year. Bank on it.

Plus they will host it for you if need be. You access it via Citrix and it can tie back into your corporate Exchange (assuming you have Outlook Anywhere/RPC-HTTP configured) for Outlook integration. It is pretty simple to host our your own BUT not every company has a box available that they can put SQL on (plus Blackbaud releases a lot of patches).

Thanks New York, seriously.
This just drives more companies down south. Companies that need workers, especially IT workers.
In Raleigh, NC am at least ten times more likely to meet someone *without* a southern accent than someone with one, so keep your southern jokes to yourself.