If you don’t have a degree you almost certainly don’t have years of (professional) software development experience.
The only exception in my experience (and this helped me get a job when I was a new grad) is having a large portfolio of tangible projects. Not just react tutorials, programs that solve a problem someone had or did something interesting. For example, I did a lot of programming in middle school and high school related to automating games like RuneScape. Also had a win at the international science and engineering fair in the computing division. It’s safe to claim years of experience when you’ve got something to show for it.