It means that a person can get the little things done while knowing very little. But it also means that this person probably will never learn enough to get the big things done.To be honest, I get secretly frustrated with the lower-level people who now exist in giant hordes. (I rarely tell anyone that.) To me, they are like people who have decided to learn 5% of their field in order to get a few things done, have some fun, and make a living.
These people use tools to create little applications for everyday use. But remember: The tools themselves are also software. But they are a level of software far beyond anything these people could dream of creating. They use languages, editors, compilers, and operating systems; but they don't have the first clue about how to create any of these things or even how they really work.
The most disturbing thing to me, based on interviews I've conducted, is that this seems to include some large fraction of people graduating with a Computer Science degree from supposedly top tier schools with high GPAs that supposedly mean something.
If you want to make really interesting exciting things that have never existed before, if you want to make a tiny little difference in the industry and change the world just a little bit, then you do need that degree. If you want to make the tools and libraries that the lower-level people use, you do need that degree.
The tools and libraries aren't sentient AI yet. If you want to use the tools and libraries at a high level, then you really need to have some knowledge about how they work. The disturbing thing I might be seeing, is that something like 40% of graduates from even good schools have that Computer Science degree, yet really only have that 5% knowledge, yet have been led to think that they know more.