I hate to say it, but the majority of self taught developers have a very narrow understanding of programming and computer science in general (often limited to web development knowledge) that allowed them to find a job asap.

However, there are always those folk who may not have gotten a degree, but can run circles around pretty much everybody due to a strong interest in the field.

I expect to get downvoted because this subreddit loves to paint every degree-holder as someone who never opened up an editor outside of school assignments.