I did a mechanical engineering bachelor's straight outta highschool, took 4 years, got a job doing CAD work, didn't like it, got a job teaching mech eng as an assistant instructor (fun and fulfilling but bad pay). Learned to code in my free time, made lots of unique projects (online codenames clone, vehicle sensor visualizer, android app) then worked on a website that got fairly popular and started making money with it. During this time I was actively applying to places, getting no responses. Then out of the blue, got an interview, went well, was hired. Now I'm a backend developer and have my foot in the door. But boy did it take time and work.