I would consider someone with no "professional" experience/no degree. You say no "professional experience", a transitioning developer can still build projects to display technical skills/knowledge/make stuff to be used by someone, contribute to open source projects, and volunteer time for non-profits/build stuff to display skills. I've had employers say they looked at my github, saw some really simple open source commits I made and that made them bring me in (this happened at a big bank and a big insurance company - led to job offers).
I was interviewing a dev this week for a job with an undergrad and a MS from good universities, she didnt have any github/projects/code to share with me, and struggled through easy algorithm questions.
So... I get that they went to great schools... I see that she has great professional experience... But i would rather interview with a dev that can share some of their code projects with me, and as long as you have basic algorithm skills id rather hire you than the person i interviewed yesterday.