They are not incompetent hacks. Stop calling them that! They were failed by a system that did not tell that they should learn how to do these things, and are struggling to catch up. You can point out areas of improvement without being mean.
It is the incompetent hacks who have failed themselves, by not being aware, and by not adapting and improving accordingly. The 'system' did not fail them.
The real world is not a college or school or university, where things are fed to you on your time. Employees must learn on their own time and other people's time. If they cannot keep up, then let's be real: they are incompetent.
By blaming the system, you take away the accountability and responsibility of incompetent people. If many better programmers were able to catch up, why can't they? We can't make excuses for incompetence.