[sanitycheck]

I could easily imagine a self taught intern being ahead of bootcamp devs, especially if the intern spent their childhood messing with Linux or something.

100% agree that getting a job doesn't mean you're good at it - but getting paid to do programming is the easiest way to keep learning. Maybe a good way to get people improving quicker could be to give them self-contained individual projects and allow them to get stuck and solve their own problems, I don't know? I do see devs spending days asking each other for help on stuff they could probably solve if they thought hard for an hour. Collaboration is good, sure, reinventing the wheel is bad, yes - but just diving in and wrestling with a problem is good practice and (eventually) fun.

I also won't call myself an Engineer for similar reasons, though an American company did give me that job title once.