I've been in IT for over a decade and in almost all companies, with the people that hire these types, before the hiring manager or person who makes the decisions even see the resumes for any position; HR throws out everyone without a degree; if they are desperate they hold onto the certificates in another pile. Not a choice, no say, it happens, unilaterally just about everywhere.
Don't like what I said?, tough, this is the harsh reality of IT and really any job today. Its the cult of qualification. Who decides who is qualified is a corrupt process when that criteria is not based solely upon knowledge and skill... as education and certifications are based on other criteria with the mentioned criteria being secondary today. Its another form of tweedism by adding a filter at an earlier stage so you only get certain candidates later. Lawrence Lessig can explain it to you.
Those stories of getting hired into IT are unicorn stories that are almost always the exception than anything else. You might get one opportunity in a 30 year period if you are lucky, if at all.
I would have appreciated someone not giving me the same advice you gave, 30 years ago. It resulted in two decades of wasted effort and financial loss, it was deceitful and limiting. It is the former because the person giving the advice should have had constructive knowledge of knowing better based upon their position and authority.
Ignoring what I'm saying or downranking to make my post invisible to go on with happy thoughts just means you are volunteering or misleading others into a struggle session that won't ever end, until they re-exam what you said and ultimately discard it. They won't thank you for that when all is said and done, and doing something like that is one of the more evil things a person can do. This is why when giving advice its important to know from what you speak, to have and show credibility.
These are hard truths, its better to actually educate and give people a chance than mislead them into self-limiting cycles of suffering without warning for potentially decades.
"Just be yourself and find your superpower" is rubbish when you are trying to find a job to feed yourself and progress to financial independence. Coding at this point will likely be eliminated by a Chat-GPT based derivative in a few months or worse case a few years, and you'll be only a halfway decent programmer by then and likely completely dependent on social nets for food thereafter while somehow bearing the cost to go back to school to re-educate.