> The reason I find it easier to work with people who have a degree in Computer Science is that I don't have to convince them of the need for good algorithms and not to try to implement parsers or cryptography by hand.

Cryptography and parsers simply do not belong in the same sentence. There is never a time when it is a appropriate to write your own cryptography. OTOH, most large compiler and interpreter projects have handwritten parsers, and many of them have handwritten lexers too.

Writing a parser can be simple enough to fit into a take-home assignment, and hand-written parser code ends up looking pretty similar to an LL grammar anyway. Parsing is also the easiest part of writing compiler or language tooling, so if a hand-written parser is too high a bar for the team then the entire project might questionable.

I'm not saying never use a parser generator, but I would personally prefer to work on a project with a well tested hand-written parser than a project using a parser generator. Especially if it complicates the build process with extra tooling, or is something really dated like Bison or ANTLR.