I view those professions as encouragement to draft them into the military. If I have to let them go, I know they can atleast hypothetically find such jobs in the Mountainhome.
I also make use, sometimes extensive use, of Fish Cleaner and Animal Trainer, and quite often find that I desperately need a thresher, to quickly make some plant fibre cloth for a mood.
Miller/Thresher might perhaps be combined.
The "milker" profession might better be expanded into some kind of "shepherd" profession, which would additionally deal with keeping your domestic animals safe and sound. Possibly merge animal care into that?
Same thing with fish dissection and small animal dissection, possibly also tanning. They could all fall under the aegis of Taxidermist.
Lye might concievably become more important when we get food preservation, as it's also used extensively for that. Lye making could also easily be combined with potash making, and even wood burning/charcoal making, since all three substances are derived from wood ash.
Combining certain tasks under the header of a single Profession would hopefully be done in a manner that still allowed control. Each Profession might allow for several concise skills to be built within it, each improving separately, at different and various levels, while still raising the overall experience of that dwarf.
I have to say that I don't think the game is necessarily going to give greater and greater degrees of direct control over our dwarfs, and on forever. I know more control is planned, with burrows and the like, and I'm very excited about that, but I suspect eventually a plateau for that will be reached, beyond which it will become more and more about your individual dwarfs and their personalities, quirks, and tastes.