And the same can be said of non-ML IT ! You always contrast better when you understand the whole history behind why you write something a certain way, even if you could just learn on the job seeing it over and over. It's like how they teach proper sorting by giving you all the bad ways first.
Also, it's not often but you do have to show creativity at times, to solve a new problem or something, and having an intuitive theoretical understanding goes a long way vs someone who learned via base mimicry.
I think instead of gatekeeping we could build bridges: be very clear that salary / responsibilities will be lower at first and judge on results. If an ML person is brilliant, he won't be threatened by an idiot Java dev. And if a Java dev is able to produce good results even if the way he reached them is less graceful, then an ML engineer should probably start shifting the second gear :D
Also, it's not often but you do have to show creativity at times, to solve a new problem or something, and having an intuitive theoretical understanding goes a long way vs someone who learned via base mimicry.
I think instead of gatekeeping we could build bridges: be very clear that salary / responsibilities will be lower at first and judge on results. If an ML person is brilliant, he won't be threatened by an idiot Java dev. And if a Java dev is able to produce good results even if the way he reached them is less graceful, then an ML engineer should probably start shifting the second gear :D