That stood out to me also. There are sysadmins, even very experienced ones, who have never written code or code-equivalent scripts. But there are lots who have

That stood out to me also. There are sysadmins, even very experienced ones, who have never written code or code-equivalent scripts. But there are lots who have, and "tell me more" seems like the obvious reaction. For that matter, anyone with a recent Civil Engineering degree has probably done a fair bit of Matlab programming, and even some geologists do heavyweight climate modelling. If we agree that a background in physics is potentially a good qualification, it's worth asking most of these people what specific work qualifies them. Maybe the complaint was specifically about those people teaching programming, though? "Sysadmin + bootcamp" could definitely prepare someone for an entry-level programming job, but it does sound worrying if a bootcamp loads up on TAs who don't have education or experience in software beyond the bootcamp itself.