Yes, definitely. I dropped out of college to be a missionary. While I was there I taught myself programming and servers and took care of the ministry’s websites

Yes, definitely. I dropped out of college to be a missionary. While I was there I taught myself programming and servers and took care of the ministry’s websites. When I left, because I was still living overseas, I applied to many remote jobs with no success so I just started doing lots of freelance work on Upwork. Essentially I got paid while I was learning. The pay was lousy and a couple clients were terrible, but two years later I landed my first ‘real’ software job for a startup in SF doing Rails and React. So yes, it is possible. If I could make it so can you, especially since you have a degree in engineering and I had no degree at all, I don’t think it will be as hard for you. Of course, as others have pointed out, your pay will be in line with real world experience, but it will go up over time.