[AlotOfReading]

This is highly region, industry, and company specific. I have "unrelated" degrees from a reasonably high tier university in that field. Asking why I'm in software is the first question I get in every interview. I've even had bay area managers tell me to my face that if I had gone through normal channels, they would have thrown my application out.

Outside the west coast, it's much, much harder. I ended up back in SF when an east coast company retracted their offer after a high level exec found out about my degrees and freaked out.

Yes, you can find places that don't work like this, but the vast majority of the market absolutely evaluates education. You need to fit into every interviewer's idea of what constitutes a reasonable path to qualification.