I'm on the business side, and am relatively young. Have dabbled with computer stuff since middle school (built desktops with my Dad, internet privileges revoked for a year in middle school for hacking the Oracle system, have run linux on my non-work laptop for the past ~5 years, etc.), but never pursued serious study whether solo or in a formal setting.
Both with tech and non-tech related learning, my autodidact process (largely determined by growing up through the late 90's and early aughts) was the following:
(1) Google search or Amazon search
(2) Blitz-read some website I thought might be relevant from the Google search results or Blitz-read for author and subject matter info. I thought might be relevant from the Amazon search results
(3) Stop at (2) because I had pieced together a solution or had gleaned a sufficient amount of information; or repeat (1) and (2) until piecing together a solution or gleaning...
This rather clunky but speedy (notice I did not say efficient) process likely accounts for far more of my knowledge and skill base then I'd care to admit to friends and colleagues.
All this to say: management's response to you is representative of a default mode of thinking determined (to a non-trivial degree) by the environment in which they grew up.
This default mode of thinking has a number of short-term benefits, but often results in many long-term headaches. Indeed, you really can teach someone the command line in a day. However, this someone will end up doing stuff I do with the command line, such as using ls 100x more than is necessary or almost always changing directories one at a time.