This is very interesting. I've always wondered about how tech jobs require endless preening and showing-off for what are often not exactly jobs that require a lot of intellectual ability.
"You want a job in ML ? Yes, learn these absurd frameworks, publish a few papers in so-and-so conferences. Then we'll let you do some clickrate optimization for our website. "
No wonder, tech in the US has a diversity problem. Not everyone wants to be this way.