I saw the phrase "full stack engineer" cross my path recently. The first time I saw this, I wrote something on Google-internal Buzz. Read on.
"Much has faded now, but there was a time when I had at least a rudimentary working knowledge in gravitational physics, particle physics, nuclear physics, solid state physics, quantum electronics, electronics, quantum optics, LSI design, circuit design, chip layout, circuit board layout, system architecture, plus: machine code, assembler for various architectures, a wide variety of programming languages, device drivers, operating systems, 2-d graphics, ..." ...
@robpike "to bake an apple pie, first you must invent the universe"
I'm not sure if I agree on principle or disagree through confirmation bias. I feel I'm a very good swe and my knowledge goes back to the transistor level, but this is correlation, no? I know many solid swes who have never written a compiler and that's fine. I think the most important thing is to be a lifelong learner, then you fill in the stack as you go.