I work for one of the biggest (non-tech) companies in the world, and in many countries we've been storing user data in spreadsheets all over the place and often without consent. So it's been pretty frantic.
Reading your comment is reassuring, as I sometimes feel like I'm the only sane one at work. Farcical training sessions, management-speak with zero content..I could go on.
I don't so much mind all that - I accept it as part of working for a large organisation - but it drives me crazy when I joke about it later and nobody has any idea what I'm on about.
I would put security experts and networking experts in the "technically-skilled" category. However, my experience of most people who have something like "IT security" in their job title, is that they're just the guy who updates a spreadsheet that has a list of security policies in it, and they send emails out to people who have breached one of those policies. Admin.
Slightly off-topic, but I can't believe the long hours you guys in the USA work as standard. In the UK, most jobs these days are 37.5 hours. Only a few do 40.
Of course there may be (rare) occasions where you need to work overtime, but 40-60 hours on a regular basis seems crazy. 80 hours is insane. People here simply wouldn't do it. I doubt anyone gets any more productive beyond around 30 hours a week.