[chao-]

>Don't you think they have a legit skill issue here and should they be better off upskilling themselves?

Absolutely agree! Just because I understand how they got there doesn't mean I think it's a good state of affairs ;)

My post was already quite long, and I didn't want to append a treatise on what one should do when encountering those engineers. It depends on many details. Avoid hiring them, if that's a power you have. If you are stuck working with them, depending on your authority, encourage them to learn or force them to learn. If you're coming in to clean up after them... well, hopefully your comp is worth the annoyance.

We are all simultaneously in the position of encountering "the world as it is", understanding it, and doing what we can to improve it.

[bronkic]

Why should you necessarily avoid hiring them? You yourself said that they are not stupid. Maybe some of them are very good, hardworking employees. And if all your company needs is a react app, does it matter that much that those people are unfamiliar with building websites without react? Maybe they've spent all their working hours doing work for their employer's company, leaving no time to learn other ways of building websites.

The thing is, people often assume that bootcampers/self-taught devs are only in it for the money and do not "care about the craft", or else they would have studied CS in the first place. But this is not true: There are many reasons why someone could have found their passion for software engineering only later in life. Some of the best engineers I know are self-taught or bootcampers.