Are most developers living in a cocoon?
No! 🙂 There must be multiple cocoons; and some of the developers are probably just being bullied inside by people who claim intellectual superiority; and all the confusion created by the buzz words — JS Fatigue, Hype Culture.
It is our job to help them out, instead of calling them out!
Most meet-ups are very specific, they are about a specific framework
Not true!
As the adage goes...
You only see what your eyes want to see!
There are meet-ups on all sorts of things — software architecture, networking, containers, service-oriented applications / micro-services... take your pick! You have to do a bit of a search, here!
How many engineers you run into are genuinely good at schema design?
This is comparing monkeys to fishes. An UI engineer isn't really required to know about database, and API architecture! Similarly a backend engineer isn't required to know about the nuances of UI architecture.
All the backend engineers I have worked with have been good at Schema design, and that is the reason they were hired! Similarly, all the UI engineers I've worked with have been pretty awesome in building performant frontends. The full-stack guys juggling their hats in both the rings have handled things quite commendably, too... and those are all the good, and only things I have to say about them.
If you see junior (UI) developers jumping into frameworks without the basics, as a problem... go on and speak about the right way to do things; do your part!
If you see a backend engineer unable to architect a simple schema, bridge his knowledge gap; and maybe have him write an article with all the learnings... which is bound to help others!