[randomdata]

The whole concept of 'requiring' a degree to get a job, aside from legal requirements, is silly to begin with. No company in existence has ever required a degree. Companies may reject someone they never planned on hiring in the first place on the basis of not having a degree to evade a discrimination lawsuit, but that's quite a different thing.

[sgslo]

In a professional setting - outside of software engineering - the degree requirement is absolutely common.

No young person has ever been hired as a structural engineer, mechanical engineer, water resources, etc, etc without at least a bachelors. The extreme minority that might be employed as such without a degree might have been originally hired at a lower position (as a draftsperson, for example) then trained and promoted from within.

[randomdata]

> No young person has ever been hired as a structural engineer, mechanical engineer, water resources, etc, etc without at least a bachelors.

But that's not a degree requirement (aside from legal requirements), that's excess in the labour pool. Once an employer has so many people to choose from, then they have to figure out some methodology to reject people. No degree is one of the only legally acceptable forms of doing so, so it is the most common.

It's a subtle difference, but an important one if you are the one joining the labour pool. Even with a degree, you're going to be competing against a whole lot of other people for the same work. Not an ideal situation.

In constrast, you see a lot of tech companies on this list because tech companies don't have much choice in hiring right now. They're lucky to get one person to apply. They don't need an arbitrary filter, nor can they expect to have one.