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Self-taught developers often have huge knowledge gaps regardless of drive or interest. In my experience, many self-taught people are more aligned with specific tools/languages and lack much of the foundational knowledge that engineers have. This makes it very difficult for them to pivot technologies.

Does attending a four-year college grant this experience? No, of course not. Too many people get their CS degree without any passion for the work. However, given two equally passionate and engaged people, the one who attends college will likely be a far better engineer than the self-taught one.

So, yes, I know quite a few self-taught programmers. Many are good, but not too many are great. Those I would classify as great started coding early, but they also went to school for the CS degrees; many completed their Masters.