[drdaeman]

> And you can absolutely be a wonderful senior without knowing the details of the CPU architecture or definitions of OSI layers or whatever.

For me, that was a giveaway author had read a bunch of stuff but doesn't understand it (so, a "packer" in their own terms). I'd suspect that the article's author is either ignorant or tries to provoke readers.

Software engineers don't have to know about p-n junctions and what the heck an electron hole is - that's an entirely different field of science. In modern age, most people stick and try to become knowledgeable in at most one. Unless they design software for microelectronics design or physical simulations, of course.

And the Protocol Wars are long over, OSI model is dead, even though some folks still believe it's somehow applicable to modern networking. While I'm pretty sure there's a heavily smoke-stained machine still using X.25 somewhere out there, maintaining it and its software is literal necromancy (and while it is a proper subfield, it's a very niche one to require it for seniority).