FWIW, I'm mostly autodidactic (have a CS degree but got it mostly in my last semester, after learning all the CS stuff while blowing off my physics major) and don't consider myself particularly social, and I've found Google to be a pretty good fit so far.
There are a lot of dominant social and professional conventions that derive from university experience, and I was using autodidact with the intent of excluding college graduates (or at least technical ones) in favor of the more archetypal bedroom geek.
