You can spend ten thousand hours doing the first hour of the same work, at a bad job. There's a lot of bullshit positions with poor management that don't exactly lead to programmer development.
I know some smart, thoughtful, enthusiastic developers who have only ever worked in one team, and that team had a bunch of dev practices that don't fit the industry's typical expectations (e.g. zero automated unit tests). Many companies would pass them over because they'd bomb that apart of the interview, but with a couple of months of on the job training, they'd fit right in.
When they go looking for a new job they're going to find it hard, but whoever can see through their inexperience an is willing to take a chance on them will be happy they did.