[learc83]

That really depends on what you mean by "similarly capable."

If we're talking a psych grad who taught themselves the equivalent of a CS degree, then sure. That's usually not the case though. Non CS grads tend to never learn the boring parts.

As someone who worked professionally for almost a decade before getting my CS degree, what I learned during my degree has made a huge difference. There were so many gaps in my knowledge that I didn't know I had.

I've also hired plenty of CS grads, and non CS grads, and in my experience, the CS grads tend to outperform the rest all else being equal.

Are you sure that you're not seeing selection bias here? Non CS majors tend to be career changers (or they've had time to finish and degree and learn CS) and are therefore older on average.

[singingfish]

How about this way of putting it: For many teams you don't need many people with a strong background in CS. Yes, strong CS grads can be useful, but often it's just as more valuable to have self-taught or similar (i.e. highly motivated) people with a breadth of experience outside the realm of having the computer as the primary focus in the task - because for many programming tasks, the computer isn't really the primary focus. A relatively small proportion of strong CS grads in a team can be really useful.