> It may come as a surprise to you, but many professional programmers are self-taught.

In high school, we once had a professor from a university visiting us to encourage to apply there. He made a short speech, where he also said: "It's important to learn and know how to learn by oneself. To demonstrate that, consider where Nobel prize winners (he used another illustration) are taught. Answer: there is no institution which teaches how to win Nobel prizes. Nobel winners reach that level themselves."

Self-teaching is a sort of default, being both easiest to start and highest to achieve level of learning. Just like most successful people are self-made achievers, the best knowledgeable people are self-taught. There can be exceptions, but those are rather exceptions, AFAIK.

This mirrors my story almost exactly. Bachelors and masters degree in engineering (not software). Got a job in a large company that had a software team. Essentially just moved into that team by helping them with work. Built up my skills both on the job and in my own time for what the job market was asking for. Transitioned to full time pure software eng job in a new company, never looked back since

In my experience:

Smaller companies will never find the perfect programmer; instead, it's more certain that they'll find a person with good technical skills who can eventually code.

Maybe that is why smaller companies often fail, they can't get the talent to implement the ideas.