I was thinking, in university I learned a lot about computer science and software engineering. Low-level programming, high-level programming, operating systems, graphics, databases, distributed systems, enterprise systems, networking, webshit, and so on and so on. But when I look at my senior coworkers, they have only ever worked on the same topic through their careers, and I rarely hear about anyone who worked in more than one of these and wasn't some academic researcher. Is this true, generally, that the first job you take out of university will largely determine what you will be doing for the rest of your life? If you start working on "backend" you will forever remain a "backend programmer"? People are even afraid of jumping between programming languages (you have "Java programmers" and whatnot), and these days I increasingly see people defining themselves by the framework they use (e.g., "React programmers"). To me this seems insane, these things don't seem that complex that you must dedicate your whole life to them or forever remain a beginner. Is this typical, and if it is, is there a way to avoid it?