Nope! Carbon steel chef's knife works way longer though. What are you talking about?

We can easily find claims like that all around the world. Virtually, EVERYWHERE! Online or Offline.

So called carbon steels, the low alloy carbon steels only contain extremely low amount of hard particles(usually the Metal Carbides, excluding Fe carbide). So they are really easy to grind, means effortless achieve of high removal rate. Knives made of such materials take much less time to get a well-sharpened state from a significantly damaged/dull state compare to high alloy steel ones, especially when the abrasive used in the whetstone is of poor hardness such as a natural stone=primitive stone. And the shorter the working time, the easier to obtain better results (=more controlled angle deviation range) relative to the operator's skill (own ability to maintain angles of working piece).

When people get used to this kind of short working time and use of conventional whetstones (Diamond x, CBN x, ceramic and natural stone = primitive whetstone, etc.), even if they bring some high-alloy steels called high edge retention super steel, It becomes natural to see the result of just dull and high-price tagged knives don't cut any. They feel knives just don't seem to grind(materials removing) well and take forever, furthermore, the edge apex don't get any sharp. Because, steels like them contains bunch of hard grains well exceed hardness of conventional abrasives in the matrix, so the knives didn't sharpened enough at the first place. No matter how long they sharpen, the maximum achievable sharpness is limited to the diameter of the carbide grain size in the steel. Unless they apply superabrasives that can properly sharpen hard carbide. And the rounding of the edge apex due to angle deviation becomes worse as the working time accumulates, so with extended working time, even if their bevels get polished, they won't get sharpness, sometimes with a cloudy finish yet dull edge nightmare too.

If they misinterpret this real world results, the Ah-ha moment comes and get fooled.

"Ah!!!! Steels other than low-alloy carbon steel just doesn't become any sharp, and only the knives made of this low-alloy Japanese steel cuts!!!!!"

Once this conception is fixed, it's very difficult to change their perception. On top of that, are they at high career and position?! No matter what others say, probably they don't change any, So it's no exaggeration to say that they've entered a realm where persuasion is 99% impossible. When you facing them, just don't waste your precious time and effort unnecessary trying to make them understand the fact. If you are the whom one of them once but, now the great person just decided to change, just kindly let your mentees true sharpening info based on evidence. They will be grateful to have a boss like you.

As you already know, when these people compare different steels, they never let the conditions to be unified, they even use different knives! Gosh.. and the starting point of sharpness don't matches, so it becomes an ideal condition for leading to strange conclusions like, "Nah. Carbon steel works way longer though."

Let's make a simple comparison by assuming that low alloy steel can withstand 5 work loads in one sharpness step down, and super steel can withstand 10, which is twice of the amount. 

*BESS score means required force to cut, lower is better. When it reaches about 200 BESS, It stop cuts.

Well sharpened Low-alloy steel 50 BESS->70 BESS->100 BESS->150 BESS->200 BESS, total 4 steps

Roughly worked Super Steel 150 BESS->200 BESS, total 1 step

Because of the significant differences in starting points, it shows the divergent pathways to reach a similar level in the end.

The Low alloy steel withstands a total workload of 20 in 4 steps,

But, the Super Steel could only withstand 1 step, total work load of 10 in this case.

A Miracle occurs where low-alloy steels can withstand twice as much actual work as super steels before becoming unusable, with exact same tools and efforts have used for sharpening both... What the heck.

The problem is made even more serious because these differences are not limited to sharpening done at the consumer level.

Most manufacturers tend to grind difficult-to-cut materials (such as stainless steel and various high-alloy steels) as little as possible during the grinding process, it's huge price saving, so they are mostly thick at the end. Low-alloy steels are relatively easy to grind, so they tend to process them thin f for right out of box. As a result, the shape (profile, geometry, especially behind the edge thickness) of the knives are often more advantageous for low-alloy steels.

I should mention this likewise. Well known for It's superior sharpness, Japanese chef's knives characteristics come from the shape, not their materials are superior. The best materials today are produced and usable in the United States of America and Europe, not Japan. Of course, still excellent materials are produced in Japan, but they rarely use them in their products because of the sky rocket manufacturing costs, even though they are domestic products to them!

Back to the steels, in this situation, and based on their personal experience working in an actual workplace and what people around them say, almost everyone agrees that "the edge holding differs depending on the steel. And the Low-alloy carbon steel is the best." Then, if someone out of nowhere says, "Nice cutting edge steels (especially the newest stainless steels) with fine diamond/CBN finishes get much better holding power than all of your low-alloy steels," it's bound to be called "the nonsense bull shit of insane kid" .

In most cases, when so many people agree on an opinion, the minority of dissent is usually wrong. At the same time, what the majority says seems more intuitively plausible. This is called a heuristic, and while it works fast and decent judgment most of the time, it some times makes serious mistakes, and this is one of those cases.

As I mentioned, super abrasives like Diamond and CBN are necessary to finish high alloy steels. But moreover, most of these people have had negative images of diamond as an abrasive because most of the diamond whetstones they have previously experienced were rough, low-quality, electroplated one, not quality matrix type ones and inappropriately used them under overpressure conditions, the worst combinations for electroplated stones. This all adds up to a total mess even in 2025!

We always need to remember that while it is easy to see the phenomenon itself, yet it is extremely difficult to properly analyze the phenomenon and determine its cause and mechanism right.