If you think above average computer knowledge is useless in the 'age of Google', then you probably don't have above average computer knowledge.
We're hiring at my workplace and I'm perhaps noticing a trend, which is that the latest crop can't do jack shit. Plenty of candidates that have great records (good grades from good schools, projects etc) but who fall apart when you try to find out what they know or can actually do. Take an EE intern, he seemed barely able to handle ohms law. Embarrassing, then he seemed surprised when it didn't turn into a permanent offer.
In the CS types, we often see ones that apparently 'code by searching', and never learn how to really think or problem solve, which is what we're really doing.
More of a trend. Back in the 50s and the 60s, there was only machine code. Only top mathematicians and others with an equal command of reasoning could figure out how to code. Then in the 70s and then the 80s, we started seeing compilers, code editors and other programming tools. These tools were designed to make programming easier, which also meant that more people (with lesser abilities) could also program. As the tools got better, programming got easier and easier. So more and more people with less and less abilities could program. With the rise of the popularity of the internet, from 95 onwards, more and more programming articles telling people how to program, became more and more available on the net. These days, I know people who are getting into programming, who can't handle basic arithmetic. That's how much easier programming has become.
During the same period, manufacturing moved to the Far East. So all the middle-class interesting jobs and high-paying jobs in manufacturing went as well. These days, with the sinking of the financial sector, there's very few career opportunities in the same scope. Programming is one of them. So millions of people who, in a previous era, would have been manufacturing executives, have gone into IT.
In addition, as IT has become more and more popular, every business wants their own customised IT system. To write such a system, they need a programmer. In the past, the client would speak to a project manager, and the project manager would translate for the programmer. But, that costs 2 people, and people aren't as flush, what with manufacturing moving to the Far East. So, people try to employ the programmer directly. Other people have got into IT trying to run programmers themselves, even though they don't have the training and the skills. They pass on the client's instructions, without translation, and pass the programmer's issues directly to the client, without any translation. So these days, programmers are having to interact with the client directly, or interact with their PM as if they were interacting with the client directly. Clients these days don't see any need to learn how to communicate with the programmer. So programmers have needed more and more people skills as the years have gone by. So this puts the more technical people at a great disadvantage, and the more people-savvy programmers at a greater advantage, which puts an evolutionary pressure on those who prioritise developing technical skills over people skills to find another profession or to do less well, and so there's less and less of them in the IT market.
As a result, there's lots more going into IT, and the technical and problem-solving aspects of the job has got much, much easier, while there is much more demand for people-skills and other soft skills. So the technical and problem-solving quality of the average programmer has dropped with each passing year.
