I don't quite understand why people seem to think success doesn't require sacrifice anymore. You can either sacrifice your time and money for a more streamlined education and get a college degree or you can sacrifice a lot of your time and take a risk to self-educate.
There's really no middle ground and both strategies can land you a job if you're good, but becoming good always requires effort and some sacrifice.
There are cases. But most probably are survivorship bias.
I would bet, most current IT professionals have a at least lower middle class background.
If I take a look at my company, that at last rings true. Not sure about the US, though.