> On the other hand, if you’re working in an agency/consultancy where it’s important for security/reliability/maintainability reasons to keep up to date with va

> On the other hand, if you’re working in an agency/consultancy where it’s important for security/reliability/maintainability reasons to keep up to date with various areas of front end tooling, database types, AI, serverless, etc, then the answer veers closer to ‘never’. Well I mean, the fact that they mention AI in the same breath and as though it entails the same scope as frontend tooling seems a bit absurd. People with PhDs in 'AI' spend much of their professional lives keeping up-to-date with a very narrow subfield: "keyword-spotting for automatic speech recognition". The idea that a 'full stack' developer somehow even encompasses that certainly takes it to the realm of complete fantasy. But "competent to be usefully productive across the development spectrum", is surely possible.