I used to work at Microsoft and I can tell you this was absolutely not true during my time there. As an engineer, you needed to have an answer to that question

I used to work at Microsoft and I can tell you this was absolutely not true during my time there. As an engineer, you needed to have an answer to that question or else you could not be promoted (at least in some parts of the org chart). It was a box that your skip levels needed to see checked in order to approve promotions. My lead told me as much in exactly those words.