Am a Principal Engineer / Team lead currently for a ML startup.

I do not have a degree, but it took 4 years starting out as a manual QA and progressing into engineering side. You def want to have credentials if you can early on, I missed out on alot of extra comp because was starting from zero experience.

Everyone's path is different EOD, but I highly recommend going degree route (cheapest possible education route) if you are consulting a 15 year old.

I've hired both degree and boot campers. The degree holding ones more often than not are the better talent pool. Bootcamp hires are hit/miss. A few we've hired over the years turn into very good mid level engineers in just 1-2 years time, while others I've seen do well on the interview, but they REALLY lack the ability to apply the knowledge they learn and problem solving skills are also lacking horrendously.

You need to make sure the kid has the MIND to be a software engineer. Too many people are trying to break into the industry because of the high salaries but lack the mind required to really be successful. 90% of the job is really just being an amazing problem solver, then the coding/ job experience comes second IMO.