[tetha]

I know quite a few backend developers who grew a lot by working in (application) operations for a month or three. If you can do so within a company or at a university, I'd very much recommend doing so - and not just because my team is chronically overworked and every pair of hands is a good one.

If done at the same company, you'll get a lot of insights in how the infrastructure works and is setup, and you'll quickly get in touch with a lot of technology. Additionally, you can quickly learn the values of good logging, good metrics, good dashboards - and the pain of not having those. If you listen, you can learn a lot about running an application server from a bearded postgres admin and his monitoring.