Well, she is learning it now and I wouldn't call her "useless". But her level of experience and knowledge is far below "software engineer" and if she were a guy she couldn't get away with it.

you'd be surprised. i worked with people who would write simple json structures by creating a class in java and then serializing it and printing it to the console to copy and paste. most of them were promoted out to management

Actually, there is a certain wisdom to promoting incompetent people in this manner. At least then you know that they're nowhere near anything they can use to do real lasting damage.

> they're nowhere near anything they can use to do real lasting damage

Except, make 'technical management' decisions like "we should use mongodb because it's web-scale".

> and if she were a guy she couldn't get away with it

I think this is untrue. I know a lot of male "sofware engineers" who are totally incompetent and remain well employed.

Presumably the OP meant "remain in that role in the company"; not necessarily intending to extrapolate to all positions at all companies.