You can code all you want in your spare time, but if that practice doesn't map exactly to what a employers (or consumers) are looking for then it doesn't matter. I wrote a SNES rom-hacking utility in C/win32 while I was in college and that didn't impress anybody. After I graduated (2001) I spent 3 months stacking boxes of silverware on pallets until I got a job as a night-shift backup operator for $10/hr. After 6-12 months of that I was like, "hey guys I automated everything can I work days now?" And just kind of went from there.

And typically, even when you do have the skills an employer wants, actually learning their particular systems well enough to be useful takes another 3-6 months, because training and integration is completely neglected. You'll get "read the docs." Which, if you are lucky, will be a disorganized mess of wiki rather than a slow and nearly impenetrable sharepoint labyrinth.

It doesn't have to be this way. I'm sure at the best tech companies, it isn't.

I absolutely believe that it is reasonable. Given two equally smart candidates, one with good academic credentials and no experience, and the other with no academic credentials and a portfolio of work, I'd take the guy that has actually built stuff every time.