Attaining high level understanding and speaking convincingly about it are entirely different skills from knowing how to build it. Interviews are always a proxy

Attaining high level understanding and speaking convincingly about it are entirely different skills from knowing how to build it. Interviews are always a proxy anyway, your job will never be solely comprise of convincing people of your expertise. Sooner of later you have to do exercise it somehow. Unless you're the CEO, that is. The higher you go the easier it is to make a career out of being in the right places at the right times.