The author does not call it out, but I think the point is that it's not only the dock. I've been struggling with MBP wakeup issues for a while. We have a whole zoo of various apple devices attached to a number of docks. All of the monitors are Odyssey Neo G9. TL:DR an issue with MBP port, MBP to Dock link, Dock, Dock to Monitor link, or the monitor itself could cause the unplugging dance.

In addition, it takes some time for Apple to squash bugs after releasing new hardware or software. M5s used to be unreliable with Anker TB4 until 1-2 months ago.

Us old people have the idea of peripherals as input (keyboard, mouse) or output (monitor, printer) - but they've all been input/output for two decades or more; and Thunderbolt and friends are much more like an Ethernet network (reliability of Wake on LAN, anyone?) than they are simple point-to-point connections.

Meaning - anything could be the device preventing what you expect to happen, even if it looks like it should be impossible and have nothing to do with it.