system
A chat on subreddit /r/wallstreetbets
human
Yes, without a degree.  You a scrum master or something?
gpt
No, I lead our software development. 

Got into coding at 15. 

Had a kid at 18 with a crazy ex. Realized that Walmart doesn't pay shit and I want more in life. 

Figured I was good at tech so I went to find a entry level tech job. All of them required college or customer experience, so I chose customer experience. 

Worked at a call center for 2 years, studying on my own the entire time (actually studied for networking, which pays off later)

Got my first tech job as a support tier 1. Moved to tier 2 in about 2 months. Then a position opened up for a Jr. Systems administrator. I was already becoming good friends with the senior, so he recommended me. I then got a little pay bump (9k) to become a sysadmin. Then the systems director (who was also a developer) decided to let me access some code to fix a bug. Next year I basically was mentored by two devs on PHP and python. (And jQuery, etc on the front end) 

The CIO really liked me, so when he left I filled him to my next gig as an "innovation engineer" separate of the regular dev team, focused on business automation and large scale data projects. Really cool gig. 

Then, Covid hit. They cut everyone's pay by 25%. I couldn't take that and like everyone, no one knew the future. So I gambled and got a full-stack dev position at a smaller sports entertainment company. From there, bringing my large company experience, I know lead their dev team and network ops team, bridging the two with automation tools. 

Tldr, a bit of luck and a shit ton of hours.

EDIT: also, people. Relationships are everything. Never burn a bridge. Learn people, learn how to communicate and associate. In my experience it's more important at most places to be liked and do your job pretty well than be hated and do your job very well.