no, its pop quiz bullshit. Oh you know about ":wq"? Well done! But if you don't know, you do it a few times and now you know. It does nothing, outside of teaching you a bit about poor UX.
> if you haven't seen it, and needed it at least once, what have you been doing?
using one of the other available ides?
> once had an engineering VP bring up that a stray ":wq" in a document was a sign of a real engineer...working outside of where he should be..
That's not a sign of good judgement, that's a sign of being technically fashionable. It's hipster shit, akin to rejecting a candidate because they're a fan of Taylor Swift and don't know who the band Tool are.
:wq is one of the most insane key combinations to quit an app and this is just hipster shit where people who use vim think they're the only "real engineers". It's just a disgusting level of arrogance and masturbation. The code is what matters, not the IDE. To focus on it as a sign of technical excellence makes a mockery of what engineers are supposed to care about (comp sci things) and replaces them with all the elegance of a high school bully belittling some other kid for not wearing Nikes.