No, it’s not. You just perceive it that way. Try advertising a job and interviewing candidates for any technical role, and you'll soon understand the point made

No, it’s not. You just perceive it that way. Try advertising a job and interviewing candidates for any technical role, and you'll soon understand the point made by that comment. I've had people present the perfect candidate with over 10 years of experience. On paper, you'd think they could rewrite the Linux kernel single-handedly in under a week, but when asked to write a Python script to check if a word is a palindrome, they have no idea. Similarly, candidates appear to know the TCP/IP stack inside out, but when asked to set up basic AWS VPC subnets and routing, they're completely clueless. They just parrot some bargain-basement course answer that is entirely incorrect.