So I work in the video games industry(at one of the largest AAA publishers) so I can shed a little bit of light on it from our side - we used to have a guy here who worked for 30 years with us, was here right from the start. He said that yeah, he got the job by making some demos on his Amiga and literally going to the house of the owner and asking if he needed any help - and was hired on the spot, worked out of his bedroom for a while. 17 at the time.
Nowadays even for junior positions we wouldn't consider anyone without at least a bachelors degree in CS, so that's at least 3 years of university - putting the minimum starting age with us at around ~21-22 years old. I myself started just after my masters degree, at 23 years old.
I think that it does mean we are missing out on a lot of very self driven, ambitious candidates - but even requiring a minimum of CS education from candidates we get in excess of 1000 applications for every junior position. I understand why recruitment would be reluctant to start looking at candidates without any formal qualifications.
Nowadays even for junior positions we wouldn't consider anyone without at least a bachelors degree in CS, so that's at least 3 years of university - putting the minimum starting age with us at around ~21-22 years old. I myself started just after my masters degree, at 23 years old.
I think that it does mean we are missing out on a lot of very self driven, ambitious candidates - but even requiring a minimum of CS education from candidates we get in excess of 1000 applications for every junior position. I understand why recruitment would be reluctant to start looking at candidates without any formal qualifications.