Honestly, I'm done trying to flip the script and approach it as a "well maybe they truly need smarter people to read the code".
Companies are openly looking for people giving them a spoonfed answer on 'good code concepts'. Most of these concepts have no academic basis, can be argued rationally both for and against, are shown to be damaging on a daily basis, and seem to have nothing going for them but 'preference' and 'context matters'. At best they form a way to talk about some things, often buzzwordy.
If companies are filtering based on whether you can regurgitate SOLID, DRY, etc., it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. At least some fanatics will treat those things as the solution to every problem and create something illegible to the majority of the population. You don't solve that by pushing the burden on the majority to adapt, you solve that by being a smarter strategist and stop letting fanatics do as they please. It's exactly as you say, write code with the commoner in mind, not the genius.
Writing code is part literature. Don't blame others if your writing is prose, obtuse and completely misses its target audience. Most people aren't born with great writing skills, start cultivating those instead of trying instant 'good code concept' solutions.
