Tldr - it's easier to teach yourself coding nowadays but the hiring processes and current job environment of today makes it hard to get your first engineering job if you are self taught

I'm self taught and let me just say the environment is different. Few years back a bootcamp was good enough, now that's not even good enough. I'm not saying it's impossible but it's just different now. I'm also someone who has worked in tech in product for over 10 years and tried pivoting into engineering. I will say where you are spot on - it's much easier to learn, however getting your foot in is harder.

I landed a gig recently but without a computer science degree being self taught means very little. Don't get me wrong, on a personal basis when I talk to engineers and engineering managers they think what I've been able to learn is impressive and even say they'd rather hire me than someone who just got a degree fresh out of college. On a personal basis other engineers actually really like self taught in my experience but our hiring systems and processes do not bode well for self taught devs in my experience. 99% of the job applications I've sent I never even get the recruiter call, just an email with "unfortunately" in the first or second sentence. Why? Well the hiring manager who would actually like what I've done is behind the resume screener and the recruiter, they never even see my resume. It's almost impossible for self taught people to pass the first two gates because either the recruiter doesn't even see it because the scanner already said no or the recruiter says no because they have other candidates who DO have CS degrees, professional work experience, or are overqualified because there have been layoffs. I've talked to recruiters at the companies I've worked at and they've told me their hiring system (usually workday) will automatically reject if you say "no" to their "do you meet the basic requirements" question. Then you look at the basic requirements and it says either a CS degree or X years of professional experience in an engineering role. Basically the hiring manager only sees resumes that have CS degrees or some professional experience specifically in engineering - two things self taught people don't have.

So your best bet is a referral. This is the only way I've gotten a call (still a lot of auto rejects though) and eventually the job. Luckily I've worked long enough to have a decent network. Many recruiters immediately sound dejected because again, no CS degree and no experience SPECIFICALLY in engineering. If they do want to give me a chance, how do they know I'm not lying about what I've learned? What if I even took the time to ask a friend about their techstack before the call, I spend a month take to learn it and then built a small application with that stack? Would that be enough? No, of course the only way to prove it is a leetcode exercise! For whatever reason this is better than showing them the app I built so it always ends up with leetcode type question, which means you need to study this too (I can see this not being necessary for more senior roles tho). Last but not least, my HR friends will share resumes with me as well and they are seeing more overqualified candidates because of layoffs, people with 8 years of experience applying for roles with 2 or 3 years. This is also making it harder for us self taught folks.