[bunderbunder]

Short answer, focused on the USA's job market: Yes, with some effort you can definitely find companies that don't require a degree.

Long answer: The long-term trend has been that it's becoming harder and harder to get by without a degree. It's just supply and demand in action. A long time ago, people with programming skills were hard to find, and companies had to settle for hiring whoever they could find.

But people with programming skills are becoming increasingly common nowadays. Supply is starting to catch up with demand. That's making it harder to find a job that doesn't require a college degree than it used to be. Now companies start having an incentive to add a degree requirement just to reduce the number of applicants they have to consider.

Even if there is not a degree requirement, it's only going to get more common that you find yourself competing directly with people who are similar to you in every way except that they have a degree and you don't. When that happens, they're likely to pick the person with the degree. It's just the safer option from their end.

[kabdib]

About 4 years ago I interviewed a candidate who was great; did whiteboard exercises well, knew a bunch about data structures, had good design sense and some exposure to systems programming (this was for a group doing drivers and so forth for the Xbox). He was young, but we were all happy with his performance and frankly we wanted him on our team.

We all said "Hire this guy."

Turned out he didn't have a degree, and a director said "Nope."

Okay, so that director is an asshole. Everyone says that he's an asshole for this decision (and he is an asshole for other reasons, too -- MS still hasn't fired him and I have no idea why not). I go to him and say, "Guess what college I graduated from?" and he mentions some place hifalutin' and crazy and a little embarassing. "Nope, I'm a drop-out from (certain cow college). Also, those really good engineers Greg and Frank? They don't have degrees, either. So why don't you give this kid a break, he'll be great."

And he was.

So . . . the results will be mixed. I can say that most of the engineers I work with do not care about educational background, they care about knowledge and experience, however you got it. The various and gormless filters you may have to go through probably do care, especially at larger companies.

Once you have sufficient experience, though, nobody will care.

[bunderbunder]

There are all sorts of anecdotes on both sides of the story. The one that I go back to is programmers I know who don't have a Bachelor's but do have jobs at companies with hiring managers who have enlightened ides about these things. And y'know what? They are starting to find themselves indentured to those companies because prevailing attitudes on the subject are continuing to shift.

A lot of them are now thinking about getting a bachelor's degree from some online program as a defensive move. Small companies go under or get acquired without much warning, and big companies can have managerial turnover without warning. Either way, not having a bachelor's degree leaves them at increased risk of being in a situation where they're getting overlooked for jobs or raises.

I think this is a really important trend to bring to the attention of any young person who is seriously considering dropping out of college to go into industry. It might be fine right now, but take a look at the long view and consider that this person is going to need to be maintaining their career for another 40 years at least.

Personal anecdote: My grandfather only had a high school diploma. He ended up being an extremely accomplished corrosion engineer, and invented some of the key tools and technologies that are used to maintain oil and natural gas pipelines. Does his experience imply that it would have been wise for my brother (also an engineer) to try and skip college? No, not in the slightest. The economic circumstances of the job market for engineers changed in the intervening decades, and the prevailing attitudes within that job market changed right along with them.