[jhanschoo]

> Someone self-studies a pretty challenging book on data structures and algorithms and you don't think that makes them curious and motivated to the point that you'd not feel comfortable working with them?

What you learn in DS&A is nearly orthogonal to many tasks a programmer does in an enterprise setting including

- writing code and documentation optimized for readability by multiple audiences with varying degrees of familiarity - learning and integrating and interfacing with other systems - modeling business constraints - working and tracking project completion in a team

It's not the passion regarding DS&A that raises yellow flags, it's the lack of awareness (though that may be OP's omission) that DS&A familiarity is only one aspect of programming.