Completely agreed. I don't have a degree and have been gainfully employed in the field since I graduated high school in 2001. Only the first few positions were difficult to land interviews for since I didn't have work experience to fall back on either. Since then most of my new opportunities have come from others I have worked with who wanted to work with me again. I have also been placed a couple times via recruiters, but like anything it's difficult to find decent folks in that space to work with.

In my experience there is also a lot of recruiting going on at relevant user groups and code camp style events. Me giving talks on Node.js when it was a new technology and I wanted to force myself to do something outside of my comfort zone (public speaking) also got me a job. What I've not had to do is blindly submit my resume through HR portals and hope to make it through some opaque filtering process which I suspect is where a lot of the struggles come from.