That's a pretty common take. Lots of people don't want teammates or opponents in their multiplayer games who are still figuring out the basics of play (or in equipment/gear/level-based games, have none).
In games with skill- or level based matchmaking it's not that bad provided there is enough of an active player base to isolate the newbies to their own pool, but not all games have either of those two things, never mind both.
I think there are fairly good odds none of my gaming friends have ever bought a CoD game.
Not that we all play amazingly refined games, there is plenty of junk and regret-ware, and a lot of other FPS games - just no one ever got into CoD.