Comment by Insanity
The “understand one layer below where you work” is something my professors at uni told us 10+ years ago. Not sure where that originated from, but I really think that benefited me in my career. I.e understanding the JVM when dealing with Java helped optimize code in a relatively heavyweight medical software package.
And also, it’s just fun to understand the lower layers.
https://cacm.acm.org/research/always-measure-one-level-deepe... This has been a classic repeat in my grad classes.