I guess because I don't really have the experience of things going wrong there. I can tune a troubling sproc into performing well, but that won't make me seem like a senior dev when EF isn't syncing with an autogenerated db properly and I haven't been through that scenario before.

I'm honest with myself about what I know and don't know, and I'm willing to work on side projects on my own to learn more if I felt hiring managers would count it for something. I'm just at the crossroads of what I should try to focus on next.