Good for you! I get a feeling that there are fewer and fewer individuals learning the basics (or sometimes not-so-basic) of hardware and operating systems. It is invaluable knowledge, even when working with PaaS. For instance, having experience with IIS since NT4 and Apache since the 1.x days is invaluable in diagnosing Azure Web Sites.
Even people actively in the industry don’t know. About 10 years ago I was working in a datacenter and one of the severs needed some hardware replaced (new ram or something). The guy who ran the team that used the server (who sat maybe 50 yards from the server room for many years), asked if he could watch me do the replacement. He had never seen the inside of a server before and was curious what it was like. This blew my mind. I didn’t get how he could be so close to it for so long and never see it. He made it sound like he never even saw the inside of a home PC as well.
At the time it wasn’t like there was a lot of protocols in place. He could have walked up to one of a dozen people and asked for a tour on any given day and gotten it, no questions asked. Not to mention random servers sitting around the cube farm for whatever reason. He just never thought about it before that day.
I provision servers for a living and usually the only times they get physically touched are when we rack them and the 2nd and last time is when we unrack them. Occasionally, one will have a hardware replacement. But for the most part a server runs continuously for 3-5 years. Even a memory upgrade involves unbundling so much cable (power, network, storage, KVM) that it's easier to rack a new one with more memory.
I'm not surprised your team leader, if of a certain age, hasn't seen the inside of a modern server. We push our datacenters further and further out into the countryside. My annual trip to our DC was a 4 hour drive and even then it was just to do annual inventory.
In a modern datacenter I totally get it. I’ve visited one of our current data centers and had to get a lot of clearance, and go through several layers of security. I couldn’t even drive in the parking lot without my name being on the list and proof of my identity. Most people will never get that chance; I have a lot of co-workers who have asked and were all denied.
However, at the time, in that office/datacenter, the barrier to entry for him would have just been asking and 2 minutes of his time (or however long he wanted to look around). The computer rooms were on the way to the bathroom. That place was all pets, no cattle, so we were constantly doing whatever it took to keep the hardware running. There was no shortage of opportunities.
Most dont even have a PC that they assemble themselves. They have very little idea of the internals. Nor do they follow and read enough about hardware news and articles. These PC could be used as Server. While not professional rack based ones, but you will still need config them.
A lot of these basic understanding and fundamental learning experience is gone. We are not far from Front End developers that dont understanding anything about HTML and CSS but only React.
We hear this every day on this website and it's just not true. Making computers accessible to people makes it more likely that they'll get into hardware enthusiasm and assembling a desktop from parts.
