[heedlessly3]

Sounds like you know unsuccessful people. I know plenty of developers who became front-end or dev ops from their own studies. It's not too hard to learn SQL or data visualization. The majority of questions can be answered via stackoverflow or slack communities. You don't need to know everything to land a entry-level job, you just need to prove you know how to problem solve.

Either way, you are not becoming a true machine learning researcher via self-study nor a bootcamp. You will need at least a master's in CS/Math/Stats to land those roles. A bootcamp is neither the lowest cost to a softwaredev career nor is it the a career effective maximizing choice.