I taught myself for a long time before breezing through a reputable EE/CS program. I always did both software dev and sysadmin. I worked up at numerous big-name shops and universities in multiple fields, starting at 15.5 yo. (I should've lied about my age at 15 to get an IBM Almaden dark matter paid internship job offer, but I was too honest.) I worked on a nuclear reactor simulator, industrial embedded navigation systems, biomedical informatics, HPC, app virtualization startup with a guest driver, email startup, numerous web/internet companies, and sales engineering and consulting.
The most important part is to never get lazy by always keeping skills current, never accepting something is impossible and roll up sleeves to dig deep. Do what other people won't, i.e., confirm/refute root causes with evidence rather than shrugging.
I also have free community office hours, feel free to sign up if you want to chat at length: https://temikus.net/office-hours