The problem is that expectations and accepted norms in software engineering are out of reality. A few factors involved here: 1- The 'Full Stack' Developer Yo

The problem is that expectations and accepted norms in software engineering are out of reality. A few factors involved here: 1- The 'Full Stack' Developer You'll often see companies looking for 'full stack' developers, and in their mind they are expecting someone who is a master of both the backend and frontend. But, that is, in fact, exceedingly rare. Most people will gravitate towards a part of development that they are most comfortable in. That's not to say that a developer can't be good at both, but the number of people who are great at both is a small group indeed. Node.js is a symptom of this problem IMO: Whatever you say about JS as a backend language, the drive to have web developers to not have to 'learn another language' to do backend work is fairly obvious. So, rather than looking for a mix of team members that are good at either backend or frontend, they look for this godlike 'full stack' developer. What they often get instead is whomever is best at convincing them they can handle it all. 2 - RDD Driven development Oftentimes, rather than picking the existing tools/paradigms that are right for the job, the tools marketed as the solution to the problem are instead chosen. And of course, the expectations for those marketed tools wind up being out of whack (i.e. the recent job posting looking for 12 years of Kubernetes experience.) 3 - It's easier/better to get a better job somewhere else than an internal promotion Many orgs make it difficult to advance, or advancement doesn't have the same gains as taking a similar role elsewhere. As a result, people often leave, and because of corporate/cultural norms (screw offboarding, we need to finish the sprint commitments!) knowledge loss is a result. 4 - The Second order effects of the above Basically, the points above feed into a vicious cycle: The developers better at bullshitting (that also realize the above) will produce RDD driven projects and hop to the next space. But because they have spent most of their time studying 'persuasion' rather than good development practices, they leave a huge mess, which only makes the hiring manager's expectations that much more unreasonable.