Yeah if you just use commits as they are intended then the complexity of git drops off massively. I’ve used got for a decade and want to know how many times I’ve rebased? Zero
It's also a big sign to me that the person probably rarely if ever actually spelunks through the git log to understand why a certain change was made. Because if one does, they very quickly discover why a workflow involving sane rebasing onto origin/master produces such a better history.
There's times when merge commits are appropriate, but they are few and far between compared to the endless abuses of merge commits by people who don't understand git in the slightest (my definition of "don't understand git" is someone who can't visualize the DAG)