Well that completely depends on where you live, and the culture there.
You could be a rock-star 10x dev in every sense of the word, but certain places in the world, if you don't have a degree or decades of industry experience, you will almost certainly never even get an interview.
You will need to seek out, and network your way into positions where you can actually impress some human being, and not get stonewalled by resume-screening software.
For every whizkid without a degree that managed to finesse their way into some hot startup or Big N company, there are likely ten that are wasting their talents on some irrelevant dead-end job doing data entry or whatever.
And as far as this goes, this feels fair.
There are tons of opportunities to show your chops, whether a code jam or CTF or hobby project or whatever (and yes, I know hobby projects aren't for everyone, so find something that is). A skill is only valuable on the job market once you've proved it actually exists.
The larger problem that you're touching on is that some companies have streamlined their application process in such a way that any way of demonstrating your capability that isn't a university degree or prior corporate experience is disqualified without consideration, and that I would agree is a serious problem.
You don't even need to waste time on college because of the information avaliability, especially when you're already this good before even being able to attend.