wtf? are you outside of the US? Cause I'm on the east coast US and I've been programming on my own for ~5-6 years and I haven't gotten a single call back ever.
I've done decent personal projects imo, nothing crazy, but
nes, n64, gameboy emulators,
cheats for games that had 100+ monthly customers,
some backend website stuff just cause i can,
some personal reverse engineering tools which are public on my github,
a website/desktop client/mobile app that are tied together for tracking movies/tv shows. your account is tracked across any app. etc.
I don't have a college degree at all though, and I think that's pretty much necessary, but probably not possible for me lol.