Well of course I'm coming from my own context, where remote mission critical servers are the norm. The problem is that the mistake you made was not knowing you

Well of course I'm coming from my own context, where remote mission critical servers are the norm. The problem is that the mistake you made was not knowing your tools, and being careless. That can't be an acceptable combination. On the other hand, automated grading is useless, and your role might never involve the same concerns about recoverability. It's a big industry, but in my little corner of it, a person who locked themselves out of root during an interview would be very hard to support in a hiring meeting.