Every time I go out

Not the OP but been in IT for a while. The current generation entering the workforce have been using tech since birth but do not seem to understand or care how it actually works. They are generally poor troubleshooters and seem hesitant to ask for help. I figure pandemic lockdowns and remote learning made this worse.

Honestly I get the same feeling. When I was in school from my CS degree a few years ago I noticed how everyone in my classes didn't know much about how computers communicate with one and another at a low level, amongst other things. My theory is that most people when learning to code nowadays, learn just that and only that. But I suspect with the rise in popularity of high level languages over the past decade(s) is the root cause

I worked for several years in IT fields from help desk to sysadmin. I'm now a Sr. Software Engineer.

I somewhat disagree. With containerization like Docker our system is pretty simple. However, there are lot more bootcamp developers that learned to code in 12 weeks which are going to know a lot less than those with a Bachelors or higher in the field.

That’s because the new generation are mostly bootcamp grads with an art degree

Well that's not great.

I admit, as an IT grease monkey myself, stuff like this about the incoming generation of coders usually foretells that support will need to work harder.

I know not all coders are like this, I've met a lot of very competent and capable coders, but if the younger generation that's graduating into development know very little about the platform, it tells me that college's are not doing the whole job, and there's going to be a lot of underskilled developers getting into making production code very soon and likely on an ongoing basis.... Which just means the IT support folk, whether sysadmin, network admin, or otherwise, will need to do a lot of work forklifting their skills up to par any time someone goes from college into the workforce.

Not great stuff.

Working as a software engineer developing for the IT team, I understand the system I'm developing on, but not the system I'm developing.

Jira customfields give me nightmares.

Yes! I always call it tech debt. It fits because, I’m constantly bailing out bankrupt users that are too big to fail. Solve Literacy , solve debt , then I can go back to making things

The only real fix

I like fixing stuff as long as it's not a printer or networking.

In one of my IT classes in high school we have a network (not connected to the internet) we we told to setup a printer on the network. My group managed to print to a printer on a different network.

I rather learn on other people's equipment and when I get good at it, I can do the same in my homelab. It's a win win from my perspective :)