[cplan]

The solution arrived on here sounds a lot like the original meaning of the term "devops", and Amazon/AWS' concept of a T-shaped engineer - a generalist with deep knowledge in one area (or a least, AWS is where I personally got acquainted with these terms).

[JoshTriplett]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills - around since at least the 1980s. Broadly speaking it seems like an accurate description of good engineers. (I've also heard "pi-shaped", to more explicitly suggest that experienced engineers probably have multiple areas of deep expertise.)