You are a warm body. We need a programmer. We will teach you to program well enough to make the client happy, regardless of your prior experience. If you don't learn, we'll bench/fire/dismiss you.

It's very cynical, but at least it's better than "oh no they can't program whatever shall we doooo" I see elsewhere.

To your point, a good manager should be helping grow the skills of their team, even if a member who technically shouldn't be there has landed in their midst. The industry is littered with stories of people who, given proper support, turned from a liability into a huge asset.

Having someone take a risk on you and be prepared to invest in teaching you necessarily will come with obligations to deliver, and even if it doesn't work out chances are you're better off (hopefully you'll have learned something even if it worst case is just that you're not cut out for that work) than when you started.

We could use a lot more of that for people to get past the initial challenge of making the move into industry after graduating. Especially given that so many areas mostly have CS heavy courses rather than software engineering.