I can also anecdotally agree with your analysis. I've seen for myself how much more some folks will respect you during interviews if you "get past" the part abo

I can also anecdotally agree with your analysis. I've seen for myself how much more some folks will respect you during interviews if you "get past" the part about fizzbuzz (algorithms) and move onto immediately talking about data structures, architecture, and how that analogues to the domain in question. All of the sudden, the interviewer relaxes and you can just see on their face the, "oh, we've got an actual senior engineer on the call here." They open up about their technical problems and stop caring about "proving if you can even code". Similarly, the teams I've had the most problems creating positive change, meeting milestones, or collaborating together properly as a team with is where no one seems to have a good grasp of data structures and code architecture. It seems to have become more common too. Many folks are quite used to having a framework that can just do everything, and if it can't, someone "smarter than them" has made a plugin or middleware to save them from having to think too hard. I personally find engineers who avoid data structures to be shooting themselves in the foot, they're giving up on one of the most useful tools in their arsenal and I witness how it limits them day-to-day. It's tough to watch.