[voidlogic]

Without a C-S degree, your burden of proof that you know your stuff will be much higher. Its a great experience and you will learn a lot of un-hip stuff that will be very helpful to you later (for example C, how OSs/semaphores/compilers/threading actually works, etc). Not to mention all the gen-eds that I believe make people better critical thinkers and members of society.

Without a degree you just be will be a another guy who (stereotypically) flings Ruby and JS and doesn't know what big O notation means (or why and when it matters) or what the difference between a interpreted, compiled and JIT compiled languages. Unless you make a big name for yourself, your name will be first to throw out along with the other non-degrees for any position with more than 10 applicants.