Yeah, to understand binary and hardware is a requirement in UC level colleges. so you will get to know them eventually.

Anyway, network, OS, hardware, and assembly programming is very different. Network is more about connection protocals, routing, domains, and encryption. OS is more about task schedualing, paging, services, and memory security. And there is binary calculations, with mainsteam binary flags and masks. Hardware is about ALU, pipline, memory loop, and so on. And assembly programming is heavily focus on coding at very very limited registers (CPU memory).

Even if you learn about binary, that doesn't mean you learn about other stuff. Anyway, IMO, you don't have to know everything to be good at your profession. But it makes you more flexible which gives you more potentials.