The joke is the PhD fellows and principals don't want some Linux hacker that never went to college fixing all their code that doesn't work.
Edit: shit/code
Is the reason imposed by a party external to the employer, maybe a regulator?
Or is it arrogance/ignorance of a strongly university-connected organization?
Or is it intended as an pretext to get the work of some people with preferable terms?
Supposedly the requirement has been lifted but most team leaders and VP's are still reluctant. If the employee eventually fails they can still use "well, he graduated from Purdue he should have succeeded"
I'd have just been a 'technician' to you but IMO: it involved all the same skills as if I'd have designed it myself. You still need to know what all the code does well enough to have written it and have the skills to improve it. So I'm not sure the distinction really matters here.
Why do you think engineers don't or shouldn't fix things?
Isn't the very idea of designing a system: solving a problem, and isn't problem solving synonymous with "fixing a problem".
One can choose to implement various formal and rigorous methods throughout a process, but at the end of the day it's all the same activity.