[daenney]

A degree can be a good confirmation that you can do what you say you can and you can be relatively sure that someone holding a degree will have a more thorough understanding of things and is capable of functioning independently (usually).

However, there's plenty of people with a CS degree I'd never consider working with and if a company was to hire me based solely on my CS degree I wouldn't consider working for them. There's more to any single developer than a degree they hold, or don't.