Sure but that is assuming: The very best case for the non-college trajectory which is that you were able to work on real, cutting edge problems from your entry

Sure but that is assuming: The very best case for the non-college trajectory which is that you were able to work on real, cutting edge problems from your entry into the workforce and had the discipline to learn the important parts of CS fundamentals required to work on them. The very worst case of college education - doing only the required for the degree, no side projects, industrial placements, or advanced topics. Yes, a good autodidact doing genuinely interesting work is going to be a more valuable contributor at 22 than someone who has spent the last four years doing a CS degree by the numbers. That's not a good example because those are two different people. Many people who enter the tech workforce at 18 may spend years doing paint-by-numbers business applications using a single set of tools, those people aren't going to FAANG jobs.