This is a small pet pieve of mine.

You only have to use the & syntax when:
You're using the < and/or > operators.
AND
The criteria value is a Cell Reference or result of another function.

It is NOT required for the = operator or with a manually entered text value.
That is the default operation of the xxxIFs functions.

I cringe when I see
"="&"sometext"
"="&A1