I feel it’s a function of abstraction.

You learned when analogue circuitry was the norm. I learned when digital circuitry was simple enough that you could readily take something apart and understand it.

Now, EE courses often start with cad, simulations, digital electronics, and you end up with people building ziggurats atop an ocean of incomprehension.

It’s exactly the same thing with software.

I don’t scorn people for this, rather I see myself as fortunate for having learned in a time when the more fundamental knowledge was still worth learning - and that’s the rub - for a vast majority, it simply isn’t worth the time or energy to explore the full stack, when there’s so much to learn atop it.