[milesstevenson]

I can only speak for myself but I'm at my first job out of university -- been here about 11 months -- and 6 months in I was tasked with implementing a feature that required directed graphs, (recursive) depth first search, and memoization at its core. These weren't concepts I was told to use ahead of time but ended up coming in handy to conceptualize the problem in the most basic way, without letting business rules cloud my thought. I don't have a degree from a top 100 school or work at an exotic place either, and I don't think my situation is unique. Just wanted to add a counter example.