The issue is, the book approaches algorithms and data structure as something to "crack" and rote memorize instead of a new way of thinking. And it's easy to spot if you ask an interview question that looks a lot like one from the book but different enough that there's another data structure better suited for it.
> Nowadays I work on distributed systems that receive 100M requests/hr with other devs who similarly lack a college education but somehow manage
That's 12x what Stack Overflow does [0], so that's quite impressive!
> Hope this helps you feel less frustrated next time you're paired with a colleague who has a different background than you do!
Since your account is brand new, you might want to get familiar with the rules and guidelines of this community [1].
[0] https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...