> How a person could attain a masters degree without actually knowing that is beyond me, but her skillset clearly had nothing to do with software.

I've worked with a few PhD's whose software engineering experience was limited to Matlab scripting. One even refused technical training because that's "not what they're interested in". Another co-worker with a masters still had no idea what they were doing after 4 years working there, often asking the same basic questions at a few weeks interval. Stuff like which branches to merge in a PR or questions that are answered verbatim in a readme file. Having to babysit educated people who refuse or are unable to learn is a great way to get demotivated. When those people start getting promoted to management positions and training junior employees is when things really start to derail.