[gregn]

Am in the same boat. Have 15 years programming experience, and can literally code circles around many or most of the people I am interviewing with, but because I don't have a degree, or interview poorly, I am getting rejection after rejection. It's funny. I always think about the Frank Zappa sketch: "What's in a diploma? A: Absolutely nothing." It's a piece of paper, but I guess it is a symbol of your subservience to a system, which in kind shows you are good at deferring to authority or something. If I were hiring, I would explicitly go after non-degreed programmers who show they can code. Dogmatic college kids often write terrible code, but they proceed with unchecked hubris because everyone tells them they're great, even though they never paid any dues or done real systems programming.

[ryanmercer]

When talking to me someone once referred to a degree as a "de facto dues card" and, that's basically what they are in many cases. Sure you need an education to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, things that require licensing but come on, my employer doesn't care what your 4-year is in...it could be in Late 15th century Peruvian funerary basket weaving... and that's fine with them, they just want that accredited degree.

With companies that have rejected me for not having one the past 18 months, I've found that (via LinkedIn) a notable percentage of their employees have random liberal arts degrees and then 2 years out of college they are on their 3rd-5th job upgrading their title at each stop...

Hi, hello, I've been at my job 13 years. I'm in it for the long haul if you pay me well, I only want to leave my current employer because after 13 years on the job I make a whopping 34k a year in a state where the hourdly median wage was 16.25 in 2016 which is within 500 dollars of what I make (a bit less I think). When people were making a big fuss to raise minimum wage to 15$ a year or three ago, I was like "no, that's what I make after 10-12 years on the job and I know my employer won't increase my pay!"

[awinder]

"subservience to the system" -- frankly theres a large degree of difference between someone being subservient and someone playing the game (one in which the rules are discussed ad-nauseam for a good decade in primary school at that). Believing that college is completely worthless & that people don't really gain anything there is its own form of unchecked hubris, so we do agree on really narrowing that down in the workplace, at least.