They know that it's a magic box into which you paste whatever incantation is in the README.md or spoonfed to you by an LLM, but otherwise have no mental model of how it works. Hell, they didn't even have the reflex of pressing "arrow up" to correct a mistyped command. And don't get me started on the lack of mastery of their tools - whether Docker, package managers or other tools they use daily.

(and speaking of LLMs, those can actually be a wonderful teaching aid - but they don't seem to be bothered by their lack of knowledge and so don't even try to take advantage of them)

I bet the guys are good at Leetcode though, or whatever bullshit interview process that hired them. This is in a Western European company that has adopted all the "best practices" possible, and places high importance on career progression, and these are considered senior SWEs on track to become engineering managers.

@noprocrasted - thank you for your 100% spot on comments. +1. And you summarised it so well that I hope they will be remembered by job seekers of today.