I use a similar criteria for programmers/developers, if you have sound fundamentals in troubleshooting and working through a (technical) problem on your own you

I use a similar criteria for programmers/developers, if you have sound fundamentals in troubleshooting and working through a (technical) problem on your own you are more useful than someone who after hiring lacks those skills. The learning curve of any dev job is a sequence of problem solving steps to get to the technical knowledge required to speak of the code accurately. If they are not willing or able to do that work without handholding and you don't have time to handhold it's probably not going to work as well than someone who can do this independently. If you haven't encountered someone who is unwilling to even look at a makefile/build/ide setting page without assistance you might not see the use of it.