Isn’t that the natural order of generations? Kids today don’t need to install drivers off floppy disks, instead Apple and Google send devices that are already installed and configured. I don’t need to know how my 50 year old plumbing works, just how to work the faucet. Because the likelihood of an underlying system having a problem is slim to none.
Pair this with the direction this industry is going. Each SWE is expected to produce more with an ever increasing cocktail of tools. It’s no longer good enough to make a memory efficient app that runs on Debian Linux x86. You need to be on desktops and laptops and mobile and half a dozen operating systems. If you build web apps then ok it’s not enough to just have it work in the three web browsers (which change every month now) - you need failover and multi region and cached all across the globe.
Our industry doesn’t incentivize deep understanding. The current goal is delivering more capabilities. Until those incentives change I don’t see why interviewing has to remain as rigid as it usually is.