As an EE and compsci major, I loved knowing how to form a transistor with n and p types, how to form NAND gates, how to deal with clocks and timing (ok, that’s

As an EE and compsci major, I loved knowing how to form a transistor with n and p types, how to form NAND gates, how to deal with clocks and timing (ok, that’s a lie), how to make vhdl turn into fab rules, how cpu and system design influence compilers, how to write a compiler, various programming languages, np completeness (ok, eh), program design, architecture, distributed systems, machine learning (getting there). The usefulness of knowing the whole stack has diminishing returns though. It can be helpful in a large company where I can make connections that others can’t, but in a small company it’s less relevant unless I were solely focused on one specific connection (say, how machine learning using math as designed in an ALU inside a CPU or GPU is ludicrous—go analog and get four orders of magnitude speed up, all that time waiting for carry bit propagation, yuck!) Your time is probably better spent learning to be a good generalist or specialist in your field, rather than knowing inside so many layers of abstraction.