Yes. I've worked across a range of companies for small startups to Fortune 500s for nearly 30 years, interviewing for positions from system administrators to dev ops to programmers, beginners to architects. There's just not a lot of generalists out there. It always surprises me how far folks can get in their careers with a very narrow knowledge base.
A couple years ago I was bringing a Java programmer up to speed on some C code just to learn they had no idea what a call stack was or how it worked. They were familiar with the stack as a data structure, but had no idea how a CPU worked or that it has a stack pointer register.
As long as the abstractions don't leak, I guess everything is fine. I mean, I can't really tell you at a physics level exactly how semiconductors work. At best I can hand wave an explanation.
That said, the lack of even hand waving knowledge about how the internet works among professionals who use it every day continues to surprise me.
A couple years ago I was bringing a Java programmer up to speed on some C code just to learn they had no idea what a call stack was or how it worked. They were familiar with the stack as a data structure, but had no idea how a CPU worked or that it has a stack pointer register.
As long as the abstractions don't leak, I guess everything is fine. I mean, I can't really tell you at a physics level exactly how semiconductors work. At best I can hand wave an explanation.
That said, the lack of even hand waving knowledge about how the internet works among professionals who use it every day continues to surprise me.