I think that we just need to realize that we exist to make money for companies. Customers don't care about how a CPU cache works, or what the runtime of an algo

I think that we just need to realize that we exist to make money for companies. Customers don't care about how a CPU cache works, or what the runtime of an algorithm is. They care about software that solves their problem. Sometimes you need to know the theory side to solve customer problems, but more often than not you really don't. Most of us are not actual computer scientists, even if we have a grad degree in the subject. On top of this, if you're not flexing the "theory" muscle often, it's easy to forget a lot of the details even if you have formal education. I think this applies to a lot of us who have been out of school for a bit. I love theory, would love to work on it for a living, but here I am.