I've been operating in IT for years and years without a computer science degree. Does it matter?

Well it depends. For 80% of my career most of what I've been doing is implementing business logic in languages like Java and C#. In those scenarios, I've been fine without a computer science degree.

I had a different job where I veered into Python and and I touched on some deeper math and data science. In those situation I was more hamstrung without the degree. I could still hit the books on algorithms if I needed to.

Just something to consider. If you're going to take a programming job without a degree, look at the language you'll be using and what types of things you'll be doing.