[nostrademons]

In my experience, the degree helps with "cold" applications (HR departments, recruiters, grad school applications, "over the transom" submissions, etc.) and does very little for "warm" applications (referrals, impressive projects/blogs).

The article may've found that degrees rarely help CEOs because CEOs rarely make "cold" applications. Once you get that high, nearly everything is done via network and past record, so the degree doesn't confer much information that isn't already available.

Similarly, technical people may rely on degrees more because their networks are not as well-developed as business people. Though honestly, most of the successful programmers I know either have no degree or went to a state school, and it's never hurt them. They maintain good networks, though.

And it may matter in academia because a lot of the grad school application process is blind, with very little information available. It doesn't seem to matter once you start to publish and people can judge the quality of your work for themselves.