[dyingkneepad]

I once tried to hire a guy that was basically a genius, but he didn't have any degrees. I had worked with him for 2 years at a previous company, so I had a very high confidence in his ability to perform in the team. My manager at BigCorp simply did not allow me, regardless of all my experience with him. But except for this guy, I would actually never try to hire people without CS degrees. So yeah, even if you can prove you're a genius and are at the same level or even above people with a CS degree, you may face some roadblocks.

At another company, I had worked with some programmers without computer-related degrees (most of them were Mechanical Engineers) and they were not very fun to work with, they got confused on even some basic stuff. Would not recommend. CS degree does make a difference.

If I wanted to hire someone for to do work that that is more scientific, like someone to do performance analysis and tuning, I would absolutely prefer someone with a Master's degree than someone without.