Can we say that Technical vs. Non-Technical in this space isn't so much about formal credentials, as it is about putting in a lot of time to learn about many relevant things, hands-on and probably exploratory?
The person whose only degree is Art school dropout, but who's logged many hours coding personal projects, running their own Linux or BSD machines, playing with networking, tweaking a game binary, etc., will wipe the floor with more-credentialed others, at a lot of real-world computer technical stuff.
Compared to person with a Engineering degree, or even a Computer Science degree-- but who spent no time outside of classwork, Leetcode memorizing, and a GitHub profile that was motivated only by FAANG-application coaching.
Those people who couldn't create their keypairs probably have fine raw material for becoming the kind of Technical person you need. But they're just having a pile of information shoveled at them in lectures and homework. And maybe they just wanted a job. And nobody told them that, if you want to be good, you have to put in the hours of quality unstructured learning time.
The person whose only degree is Art school dropout, but who's logged many hours coding personal projects, running their own Linux or BSD machines, playing with networking, tweaking a game binary, etc., will wipe the floor with more-credentialed others, at a lot of real-world computer technical stuff.
Compared to person with a Engineering degree, or even a Computer Science degree-- but who spent no time outside of classwork, Leetcode memorizing, and a GitHub profile that was motivated only by FAANG-application coaching.
Those people who couldn't create their keypairs probably have fine raw material for becoming the kind of Technical person you need. But they're just having a pile of information shoveled at them in lectures and homework. And maybe they just wanted a job. And nobody told them that, if you want to be good, you have to put in the hours of quality unstructured learning time.