I don’t know much about IT (I’m CS), but Ad is very specific to Windows, no? Shouldn’t you instead be asking them about higher-level concepts like access controls, networking principles (http vs tcp vs ip, routing, dns, etc), and basics of cybersecurity (attack surface, network segmentation, etc)? It sounds like you’re looking for practical knowledge about specific solutions rather than familiarity with concepts.

CS still operates heavily in the windows environment. The majority of the world and businesses operate in windows. You should know the basics. Asking high level concepts isn’t needed if they’re unable to answer basic foundational questions which most companies operate in

Learning our stack when you’re comfortable with programming in general isn’t all that difficult, learning our stack when you struggle with basic concepts will be a challenge though.

And you just summarized what I’ve been saying.

Also CS is my field as well, and knowing how the basics work inside of a windows environment, is a basic concept.

I don’t know why so many are down voting this idea.

If you put out a job listing for say splunk, and you show up and don’t even know the basics of how DBs work… that’s what I’m referring to.