If a journalist with no experience learned to code on the side and built something interesting we would applaud. We wouldn't make them an SRE at Google or Uber

If a journalist with no experience learned to code on the side and built something interesting we would applaud. We wouldn't make them an SRE at Google or Uber She didn't just build something "interesting", but something that was so compelling it launched a large investigtion that affected the executive management structure at a $50B company. If this journalist turned programmer did the same, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were hired by Google.