“Why were they willing to take a chance on you (no college degree )?”
I can answer that one: Skills.
How many people can program C/C++/C#/Java/SQL, etc? Very few. It’s not that hard but so few do it.
To get a first job, create a project for yourself or with some buddies, put it on a resume, the Dice/Monster ‘recruiters’ that do word searches to find candidates find that person and they get interviewed. Interviewers do not ask where a person went to school. They only ask technical questions about programming. Get enough answers right, get hired.
Actually, computer programmming, I mean, ‘Software Engineering’, is one of the few career fields that do it right to a large degree. They don’t care where you went to school, they only ask can you do the job.
Actually, C++ is very hard.
Back in the 90s, we used to give a 20-question test to potential C++ programmers. Many experienced guys could not answer any of the questions correctly.