> I think this outlook is a way of gatekeeping engineers who don't have a formal CS background.
If a driving school doesn't teach parallel parking, pointing out that deficiency is not gatekeeping.
> It's just not what most bootcamps are targeted for.
If you're making $35,000 a year in the service industry, making $70,000 translating Photoshop files into HTML is life changing. If making that transition is your only goal, great.
But I think many people enter bootcamps with more ambitious goals. They'd like to move up the career ladder, take on more responsibilities, tackle more difficult problems, and receive commensurate compensation.
People I've talked to who come from non-CS backgrounds said they hit a wall years into their careers, having to play catch-up on the job. In my experience, CS didn't help me as a junior engineer; by the time I was senior, those concepts were invaluable.
When people with CS-gaps hit a wall in their career, we have a two options: we can give them more responsibilities anyway, which sets them up to fail, or we can identify gaps early and help them. That's the opposite of gatekeeping.