Most good engineers I worked with had a common trait - they just happen to know a lot of random stuff, facts, and practices at surface level. The conversations with them were always fun and insightful as they kept telling and sharing interesting nuggets. Although they were not an expert in those, they did have a primitive idea and understanding of what they were talking about.

They built this by reading articles and watching videos on seemingly interesting topics that they stumbled upon while surfing the internet. They consumed it even though the topics were unrelated to the domain they worked on.

Being open to learning new things is a sign of deep interest in the field and spending time exploring it builds a muscle to learn and grasp varied concepts. An interesting by-product of doing this is cross-pollination, where you can connect the dots draw parallels across fields, and come up with out-of-the-box solutions.

The stuff I am talking about may seem like standalone concepts and facts. Some of them are advanced data structures and algorithms, some fragments of database internals, communication protocols, interesting design choices made by some companies, common pitfalls of using a particular tech, etc.

Now, these facts and understandings are not learned and built overnight, and neither they are learned at your workplaces. These are built by consistently spending time self-studying.

To be honest, this is not difficult to achieve, just make sure you spend some time (say 30 minutes) every weekday to learn stuff that you find interesting and build a genuine interest in those topics.

Over time, you will build momentum and turn learning into a habit and find yourself dissecting complex concepts with ease, drawing connections between seemingly unrelated topics, and confidently navigating the landscape.

ps: there is no need to sacrifice your weekends, 30 minutes every weekday over 3 years is more than enough time to build a really good understanding and become a better engineer.