The trick is you needed the degree to get that first job.

It's like saying the first floor isn't very important once you build the second floor

I'm not sure that anything I've done really counts as a "First Job". I've done an internship, and worked on several long term contracts, for which I can show results, but at the end of the day, it's unconventional to say the least.

I don't know; there is the issue of when you try to find your next job that is not a straight continuation of your last. Without a CS degree if your first job is like a front-end ReactJS worker-bee then all you have told your potential next employer is that you can do what Figma's AI can do, just for more money. I agree that as you gain experience, the significance of the degree is lessened by the wait of your experience but if you took your same resume and deleted the education section, and never mentioned it in interviews, I think there would be some difference in outcomes.