That comes from reading about the tools.
Domain experience is a given. You need that to do the job regardless.
Pattern reuse is also critical - or you end up reinventing the wheel for every little thing.
In regards to staying up to date on php. Surely best practices aren't changing very often? For myself, I look forward to some niceties coming in my tech stack, but I honestly care very little if literally anyone at my org is aware of them. We won't be retrofitting old code and using it in new code will come with all the little gritty interfacing with old code issues that always surface.
So why should I judge them on something that will have little or no impact on their day to day and when it does come around the people who do keep up are more than happy to show it off and evangelize?